


The Shape of You

by cowboykylux



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, The Shape of Water (2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1960s, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - The Shape of Water, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood and Injury, Blood and Violence, Dream Sex, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Implied/Referenced Torture, Inspired by The Shape of Water (2017), KYLO REN IS NOT A FISHMAN IN THIS FIC, Kylo Ren Needs a Hug, Kylo Ren is Not Nice, Love Stories, Masturbation, Mutual Pining, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Romance, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Supreme Leader Kylo Ren
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-16
Updated: 2021-01-12
Packaged: 2021-02-27 18:41:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 31,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22760386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cowboykylux/pseuds/cowboykylux
Summary: You do a good job of it, staying out of the way. You’re quiet, you’re unsuspecting, you’re practically invisible; just the way you like it. Until one sunny summer day in 1962, the government base where you work acquires an unusual asset, and everything you know is about to change.In the race to save this lonely, desperate, beautiful man, loyalties are shaken on all sides – and the bonds of true love are tested.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Reader, Kylo Ren/You
Comments: 54
Kudos: 131





	1. The Asset

It’s warm, in the dream. Warm and black, in an all-consuming kind of way. You’ve had this dream before; it’s a comforting one, a familiar one. In it, you are surrounded by inky darkness, smooth and silky as it wraps around you. In it, you are walking through a grand expanse towards a light, red and glowing.

If you had not had this dream before you think you’d be terrified, think it an omen of some ominous kind. But the darkness is not something to be afraid of, you’ve come to learn. And when the red light beckons you, there is not a promise of evil on the other side, but rather one of liberating freedom.

You reach out to it, walks towards it. You’re in no hurry, in the dream, in no hurry at all. It’s patient, you find with relief as it seemingly takes eons and eons to navigate the soft velvet of wherever this place may be. As you get closer, little pricks of light begin to emerge, stars from a galaxy far far away. They twinkle as if they’re smiling down at you, and you smile back, unafraid.

You know how the dream ends; it ends the same every time. The jolt of your alarm clock bringing you back to consciousness, pulling you awake. You never seem to be able to reach the red light, but you aren’t discouraged by that – how could you be, when every time you have this dream you get closer and closer? When every time your hand seems to reach out a little farther?

It’s going to end soon, you think in the safety of your mind, in this little bubble you’ve built for yourself. The dream is going to end, and you’ll have to face the day, another day of being you, of being (Y/N). Soon enough you’ll get dressed and have breakfast with Armitage, your friend who lives next door, and he’ll complain about his students and you’ll complain about work only for a short while before you’ll need to go get ready to spend the next ten hours at the place.

It’s going to end soon, but that’s alright, because you know after those ten hours are up you’ll get to come home and hopefully, hopefully, have the dream again.

When you walk through the rich blackness of the void, when you approach the red light, this time you’ve gotten a step farther. This time you’ve reached your hand out nearly to the edge, nearly to the very edge of the red. It curls and winds around your hands like smoke, if smoke could be hot. It tugs at the tips of your fingers, wanting you to come closer closer closer, and you chuckle at its eagerness.

“One day.” You say sadly, in the dream. Or maybe you say it out loud, out in the real world too. You don’t know.

You live alone, so there’s no one to ask, no one to laugh at the way you talk in your sleep, if you do at all.

The red tugs on your hand again, insistent, but you shake your head with a sigh, you reclaim it because you have to, you have to or you’ll never wake up and then you’ll be late for work, and if you’re fired from this job then there will be astronomical consequences, consequences that you simply can’t risk.

The red seems to know this, and it’s almost as though you can feel it sighing too. It reaches out to caress your face, warmth seeping into your bloodstream through the gentle press of an invisible force against your cheek. You let your eyes begin to close slowly, savoring the feeling of the love of the universe, because that must be what this is, that’s why you’re not afraid.

As your eyes close, as the red begins to slip away, you think you see the silhouette of something – of someone, standing just on the other side of the light.

You snap your eyes open to try and get a better glimpse, because you’ve never seen that before in the dream, you’ve never ever seen a person standing on the other side, you’ve never seen _anything_ solid and corporeal and real and –

You bolt upright in your bed, the radio crackling to life from across the room, its bright cheerful jingle alerting your brain to get the fuck out of bed and go turn it off.

“ _The only station for when you’re on the go, tune in to AM W-6-Z-O!”_ The swing singers coming through the speakers are loud enough to earn you a pounding on the wall, courtesy of your neighbor and one of only two friends you had, Armitage Hux.

“Christ (Y/N)!” Your friend says loud enough that you can hear him through the wallpaper, “It’s my day off can’t a man get some sleep?”

Your feet slide into slippers on the side of your bed, and you pad across the room naked to shut the radio off. You’re not really one for listening to all the commercials and commentary, preferring your vinyl collection much more than whatever taste some disc jockey thinks he has.

“Sorry Professor,” You roll your eyes sarcastically, “But if I have to be awake at this hour then so do you.”

It was the routine, day off or no, that you spend every morning together. Neither of you had anyone, no one to really call your own, and so you spend it with one another. It helps fight the loneliness that creeps into your soul sometimes, and even though he’s aggravated at waking up on a weekend, he still does with a hopeful, “Coffee?”

Smiling to yourself, you grab your robe and tie it tightly around your body.

“I’ll be over in five.” You check the time, before leaving your bedroom to brew up a big pot of Lyons standard roast.

Once the coffee has brewed and you’ve brushed your hair enough to look presentable for your friend, you make the short trip next door with hot percolator in hand, and a smile. A smile which, upon the opening of his front door, is not returned to you by Armitage, who instead looks like he may crave death or violence.

“Remind me again why we wake up at two o’clock in the morning?” He grumbles, his Irish accent thick from sleep as he abandons the door, leaving you to close and lock it behind you.

You follow him further into his apartment, a chic, mid-century modern space that looks very curated, very well thought out, very Armitage. He’s changed his design taste more times than you can count really, but for the past year it’s been the same; dark teal paint on the walls and ceiling, with matching teal-stained wood on the floors. His furniture and décor are all varying shades of rich orange to provide an interesting contrast that only gives you a headache sometimes.

“Because my shift begins at five, and it’s a two-hour ride to work.” You reply, fishing out two mugs from his cabinet in the kitchen and get to pouring you both a generous helping of coffee.

“I didn’t ask why you had to be up at two, I asked why _we_ had to be up at two.” He huffs, gratefully accepting the mug with his cold hands, humming around a healthy sip of the brew.

“Because you love me.” You wink, setting down the coffee pot in favor for rummaging through his pantry, pulling out flour and sugar, “And you love the pancakes I make you.”

Armitage sets the table with plates and silverware while you begin to measure out ingredients and raid his fridge. It was a good setup you thought, you cooked breakfast and then abandoned him with all the dishes and cleaning up. You spent enough time cleaning, you always say.

“You do make damn good pancakes.” He complimented you as you stuck some butter in the pan to melt and sizzle.

“Any plans today Armie?” You smile at the immediate groan that escapes from between your friend’s teeth as you mix pancake batter into the perfect consistency to be poured.

“Yes, regret ever telling you about that nickname.” You can tell he’s scrubbing a hand over his face, the way he tends to do when he’s annoyed.

“Drink your coffee.” You tease, using a ladle to start breakfast properly. “I was thinking, when I get back from work maybe we can go downstairs and see the new film that Boris got, it’s a Fred and Ginger musical.”

Your apartment building wasn’t really an apartment building at all – or at least, it didn’t used to be. What were once storage rooms for the cinema downstairs had become single bedroom apartments nearly ten years ago, according to Boris, the friendly Bulgarian proprietor. When the cinema began to fail due to the rise of television, he sought out extra income and became a landlord.

This was perfect for Armitage, who, as a professor for film history at the university, had an immense love for the classic older films which were only ever screened on special occasions, or at special theaters. Boris knew this, and he acquired many old film reels from the 1930s and 1940s, which he played during the week as a way to generate interest on otherwise slow days.

You paid your rent early, which had the added bonus of being on Boris’ good side, which in turn meant you got to see the movies for free whenever you wanted.

“Which musical, Top Hat or Swing Time?” He eagerly accepts the pancakes you flip onto a plate for him, before drowning it all in syrup and powdered sugar.

“The Gay Divorcee.” You tease with a grin, “Right up your alley.”

“Ha ha, very funny.” Armitage rolls his eyes once again, although now he’s much less aggravated with coffee in his system and food in front of his face.

“Will you see it with me?” You put a hand on your hip, and he smile.

“Of course I will. It’ll give me a good excuse to finish grading these essays, maybe I’ll tell my students they can write something about the musical for extra credit – god knows some of these kids will need it.” He gestures to the pile of marked and unmarked papers on the other end of the kitchen table.

The stack that still needs to be graded is far taller than the stack of finished essays, and you wince when you read that the one on top of the stack has been given a D-.

“Which paper is this one?” You plate yourself some pancakes and sit at the table, making sure the stove is off and the plastic spatula isn’t anywhere near the heat where it could be left to melt.

“The midterm; an analysis and comparison of German Expressionism in cinema before and after the second world war.” Armitage sighs around a bite of the delicious breakfast.

You can’t help but shake your head fondly at your friend, that topic being so on brand for him. His father was a Navy General, and he had been even more patriotic than most. But while his father had big dreams for Armitage to follow in his footsteps, instead he became a professor, much more interested in researching and educating the new generation.

Still, he found ways to incorporate his love for the military into his love for cinema. It’s all propaganda anyway, as he likes to say.

“Show me the awful papers when I get back, we can laugh about it over lunch.” You smile as you dig in to the breakfast you’ve made, but he scoffs.

“Oh please! I’ll be crying.” He replies, a funny blend of deadpan and melodramatic.

Once breakfast was over, you kiss Armitage on the cheek and wish him a good day, before taking the warmed coffee pot back to your own apartment next door. Filling up two thermoses, you set them near your purse right by the door so you can easily grab them on your way out.

After breakfast you typically only have fifteen minutes to get properly ready for the day, but that was alright. Dressing never took very long, not when you were provided with a uniform. Sometimes Armitage exhausted you with his fashion shows; trying on every possible combination of sweater vest and tie he owned, asking for your opinion on new trousers. You loved having one less decision to make, especially this early in the morning.

The uniform was a simple dress made of a dark grey linen. It had accented cuffs on the rounded collar, short sleeves and hem in a darker grey, and two large pockets on either side which proved themselves immensely helpful. While not required, it was often encouraged to wear the provided apron, a white thing that’s gotten so soft and worn over the years from all the bleach baths you’ve had to give it.

And though the uniform may seem drab and boring to some, you adored the anonymity of it. You liked being able to blend into a crowd, to move unnoticed. It was imperative that as a cleaning woman you were out of everyone’s way, and any flashy attire would have certainly drawn unwanted attention. That’s not to say that many of the other cleaning women didn’t enjoy the attention – your own dear friend Gwendoline among them.

With the red scare, your boss had made a push to encourage individualism within his employees – he felt that everyone looking exactly the same and wearing the same was far too much like communism, and he’d be damned if he were anything like the Soviets. So things like scarves to tie back hair, pins or broaches, nail polish colors, and shoes were encouraged to be something you made your own.

The only one of these little pleasures you indulged in were your shoes, and your daily dilemma often consisted of which pair of short reliable heels you would be slipping your now stocking-clad feet into.

You were having one such dilemma now, looking at your wall of heels. Another perk of living alone, you think to yourself, no one there to tell you to get this obsession under control.

In honor of the dream you were once again so lucky to enjoy, you picked a pair of red kitten heels off the top shelf and put them on as you hopped across the living room, grabbing your dashing out the door.

* * *

The world is so quiet, this early. Not completely silent, as it were, because there were always people like you, always people having places to go and friends to meet. Living so close to the Vegas Strip was interesting, and you saw all sorts of people on the sidewalks and in convertibles, driving around in the dark with their sunglasses on because they think it makes them look cool.

As you descend the steps which lead out of the apartment, you are stopped by the familiar sight of your landlord up on a ladder, arranging letters on the bright marquee sign surrounded by golden light-bulbs.

“(Y/N)!” He calls to you with a hand up waving, “Good morning dear!”

“Good morning Boris, you’re up early.” You call back, making sure to be loud enough that he can hear you with his old ears. His hearing has been failing him lately, and you do your best to help him when you can.

“Early or late, eh? Will you come to the screening tonight?” He laughs heartily as he gestures to the big black letters which read the name of the musical.

“Of course I will, I’m bringing Professor Hux along – he’s going to encourage his students to come this week.” You tell him, and he gasps.

“Students! He has big class, yes?” Boris’s excitement is contagious, and you find yourself grinning.

“Yes, nearly one hundred and fifty eager filmmakers.” You inform him, and the news shocks him so much that he nearly falls off the ladder.

Thankfully he has one of his sons, a nice young man named James, holding the ladder steady. You always wonder why James isn’t the one up on the ladder, since he’s clearly in better shape, but then you remember this is Boris you’re thinking of – he’s the kind of man who doesn’t trust anyone to do anything the right way.

“One hundred fifty! When you come tonight, you get free popcorn, okay?” He is giddy, and you feel good to have made his day a happy one.

“Okay Boris, I really must go now.” You see the familiar headlights of the city bus turning the corner, so you give him another wave, “I’ll see you this evening.”

“One hundred fifty…did you hear that?” Boris is in awe, not having had so many customers in a long time.

It takes three buses to get to work. When they had been looking for a place for you to live, you had insisted that there be a bus station as close as possible because if you were going to be spending ten hours on your feet, you wanted as short of a distance from the stop to your front door as possible. You don’t mind the two hours each way, you don’t mind the long grueling hours – but you sure as shit were not going to take any extra steps in your heels if you didn’t have to.

The bus comes at exactly three every morning, and it’s the same bus driver every time.

“Good morning Miss (Y/N).” He greets you, a kind older gentleman who probably needs his sleep more than even Armitage did.

“Good morning Mr. Henry,” You reply, taking a seat up front so you might talk to him and keep him company on the drive to the main bus exchange station. “Did you have a good evening?”

“I surely did, there’s nothing better than getting to go home to the Missus.” He gives you a dreamy-eyed smile through the rear-view mirror. “It was her birthday last night, I took her out to dinner and a show.”

“Mr. Henry you are such a romantic.” You lean your head against the window, using your small hat as a pillow to shield yourself from the cold rattling glass. “Where did you take her?”

“Circus Maximus in Caesars Palace! Damn what an evening. We only just got back home an hour or so ago, and I wanted to take off the morning to get some rest into these bones, but my boss didn’t take to the idea too kindly.” Henry shrugged, making you frown.

You wish you could encourage him to stand up to his boss, but with racial tensions as high as they were, you didn’t want to see your friend get hurt, or lose his job. Henry had been driving this route ever since you began working out in the desert, and you thought of him as a highlight of your day, a friend even if you only saw one another for the short time you did.

“I hope you have a fast shift today and that no one gives you any trouble.” You tell him honestly, only ever wanting the best for Henry. You’d offer him some of your coffee, but he’s got a thermos of his very own up at the front of the bus.

“Seeing your smiling face certainly does help, Miss (Y/N).” His eyes glimmer when he asks, “Now tell me, anything interesting going on where you work?”

You chuckle and shake your head, staring out the window as the streetlamps blur together, cutting through the dark.

“I’m afraid not, or if there were, I wouldn’t know anything about it, I just clean.” You say.

“Don’t be so down on yourself, we’re the ones they don’t ever suspect, isn’t that right?” Henry asks, and when you look back at him, he’s got a smile and that mischievous look in his eye again.

“Yes, it is.” You reply with a smile of your own.

More and more people get on the bus as it visits the various stops, until it’s almost packed. You used to be so surprised by that, by the way so many people seemed to wake up before the world was ready, before the sun had even begun to stretch and blink away the night. But that was Las Vegas, you supposed, almost like New York City in a way, with all the casinos and hotels and shows. Sometimes it felt very much like you lived in a parallel universe, where day and night were reversed.

You thank Mr. Henry and give him a warm parting smile when the bus finally arrives at the transfer station. Everyone follows suit as they exit, and it makes you feel a little brighter to know that people are willing to be polite if only someone would set the precedent. You’re more than happy to set that particular precedent, every time.

From Mr. Henry’s bus to the next takes nearly five entire minutes, between the length of the bus station and the busyness of the crowd. You always come close to missing it, and you’re always out of breath from running. Thankfully though, you have Gwendoline to look forward to every morning, your friend who always saves you a seat on an otherwise crowded bus, always looks out for you otherwise you’d have to stand for the next hour, holding on to overhead bars that you can’t quite reach.

“Hey! Come on, what do you think you’re doing?” One of the other passengers complains when Gwen spots you and offers you the seat next to her at the back of the bus.

You both always took the very last row, because you were the very last stop on this particular route before it swung back around to the transfer station.

“You’re getting off in ten minutes you can deal.” Gwendoline snaps back, and the woman rolls her eyes, adjusts her grip on the handrail.

“Thank you.” You snuggle up against your friend on the crowded bus, your laps now filled with your cardigans and purses.

You met Gwendoline on your very first day at work, completely by accident. You were in the wrong place, lost and confused, and had stumbled across this gorgeous blonde woman who wore bright red lipstick that smeared around a sneaky cigarette. She had helped you, and you’d been inseparable at work ever since.

She isn’t very much older than you, but she has that worldly quality that makes her feel wise beyond her years, and gives her an authority over people – even strangers – that you find endlessly amusing.

“Henry was cutting it close today.” She comments, looking at her watch.

This bus departs the transfer station on the half-hour, and does not come back until the next half-hour. You’ve never once missed it, but you certainly have chased it down to get it to stop and pick you up. 

“No, it’s not his fault, I think one of the other routes is down so people were confused and no one knew where they were going.” You point out the bus window to the people nearly swarming like bees around the poor people in the ticket kiosk.

“Fuck, really? It’s too early for that.” She looks nearly offended, as if to say, how dare the world be so difficult.

“I agree.” You reply to both her words and her look, and take one of the thermoses out of your purse, offering her, “Coffee?”

She plants a big kiss to your cheek and warms her hands on the thermos before bringing the thing up to her lips for a long deep gulp. You hope that the thermos has done a good job keeping the coffee hot, because you know how much of a bummer warm coffee can be for some people, but your worries disappear when she happily sinks into her seat on the bus and smiles, content.

“You’re a saint, (Y/N), you know that?” She clutches the thermos to her chest, and you grin.

“It’s the least I can do.” You reply, because it’s true – with all she does for you, you’re more than happy to return the favor for your friend.

“Cards?” Gwen pulls out a deck from her pocket, and you light up at the sight of the bent and beat up deck.

“Cards.” You agree, the two of you twisting towards one another, shuffling and re-shuffling the pack before dealing them out onto your laps. 

* * *

When the last of the passengers have gotten off the bus, the driver pulls over onto the side of the road, letting cars whizz past on the interstate to your left. The sun still hasn’t made her debut yet, and the driver has turned the lights off, so that the bus might blend in to the darkness a little better.

“Identification?” He asks, like he does every morning.

There is a reason you and Gwen are the last two passengers every morning, a reason why this is such an important bus to catch.

You and Gwen don’t bother getting up from the back of the bus, not feeling in the mood to walk all the way up front to only go right back, so you fish out your ID cards and flash them long enough that the bus driver can see them in the rear-view mirror.

“Thank you ladies.” He says, much less like a robot this time. “I know you’re you, it’s just protocol.”

“You ever wish you could say ‘fuck protocol’?” You ask, and he regards you, not-unkindly when he replies,

“All the time.” 

The bus roars to life once again, now that your clearance has been checked for the first time of the day. It’s a much more scrutinous process at the next bus stop, one you’re always a little paranoid over but prepared for. Bag searches, identification card and number, finger scans, the whole works. Four-thirty always seems too early for that sort of thing, and sometimes you wonder if you’ve accidentally brought something in that could be deemed dangerous, that they’ll randomly find some reason to haul you away.

The desert is dark and stretches on for miles and miles with nothing to see, nowhere to go, nowhere to hide, should one need to. You hope you never need to.

Gwendoline always makes fun of you for it, but it’s all in jest. She tends to give attitude to the security guards at the bus station, but she gets away with it because she’s a bombshell. She may be just a maid, just a cleaning woman like you, but damn does she fill out her dress nicely.

“Have a great day ladies.” The bus driver says once the hour has passed, and you and Gwen have gone through ten rounds of card games, leaving you the winner this time.

“See you tomorrow.” You reply in unison, making one another laugh at your timeliness, jinxing and double jinxing one another, demanding bottles of Coca-Cola as payment.

This bus station, much like your work and your job, doesn’t…technically…exist.

It’s a small little depot in the middle of the desert, armed guards at every door and gate. You join the pool of other employees, when you get off the bus and pass through the first gate. No one is allowed to drive their cars onto the main site, everyone – no matter rank or position – has to shuttle in from this station.

It’s always so interesting seeing everyone here, milling together and scanning their badges. You’re sure it must be a humbling experience for some of the managers and heads of department, being treated the same as the sanitation workers, but if they’re upset about it they don’t show it.

You get your pat down and walk through the metal detector while security inspects your lunch.

“Don’t you ever get tired of eating the same thing?” One of them, a young guy who is usually in good spirits, asks.

“If you want to come over and pack my lunch for me, I’d be happy for the variety.” You joke, giving him a playful wink that makes all the other security guards whistle, as you clear the metal detector with a green light.

“Don’t go giving him any ideas, (Y/N),” Gwendoline harmlessly flirts with the guy, “I might want him to toss _my_ salad instead.”

This makes them all whistle and jeer, hoot and holler and laugh and Gwen laughs back, snatching your purse and hers back from the metal table. Some of the other employees catch ear of the conversation and they shake their heads with incredulous smiles of their own, but neither you nor Gwen really care – what’s the point of working if you can’t have a little fun every now and again?

There’s no room for playing cards on the shuttle, not this time. The small bus isn’t jam packed like a tin of sardines the way the public city buses are, but still there isn’t an empty seat, no real luxury for spreading out. That’s fine though, you think, as you shift into your professional attitude, start thinking of all the things you’ll have to do today.

It’s Sunday, and that’s a good day, a strong day, you think. It’s usually barebones crew, only the most basic staff that needs to be there. In fact, it’s usually mostly cleaning people like yourself and Gwen, getting the place ready for full operations to commence Monday morning. Of course there are still all sorts of scientists checking on their experiments and engineers testing their inventions and the like, but on the whole, Sundays are easy days.

They wax the floors on Sundays, so you know you’ll be doing quite a bit of sweeping scrubbing mopping for most of the shift. The building is huge, but more than that it’s sprawling, like a maze almost in the way that it’s constructed. That’s purposeful, you know, but in the beginning it seemed almost impossible to clean because everywhere you looked there was another hallway leading to another set of doors that all had tile and shelves and counters that needed to be taken care of.

Now though, now you were an expert at it, able to clean up even the stickiest messiest stains in twenty minutes or less. You prided yourself on your work, and always wanted to leave everywhere you went better off than it was when you got there. This job was important to you, vital, one might say.

The shuttle crosses through the gate in the desert, the gate which feels as though it has no ending, chain link splitting through the sand. The large sign boasting **RESTRICTED AREA NO TRESSPASSING** nearly disappears into the purple of night, and you check your watch to make sure you and Gwen will be able to punch in on time.

“We’ll be fine, we always are.” Gwen sees you checking, and you roll your eyes.

“We’ve got fifteen minutes, it takes nearly ten to get all the way to the lobby.” You show her your wrist, but she only pushes it away, not bothering to look.

“Then that leaves us with five minutes for a cigarette.” She whispers covertly, and the two of you snicker together at her secret smoking habit.

The base never looks more imposing than it does like this, too early in the morning before the sun has come up, when there’s nothing but harsh fluorescent lighting flooding the desert. The buildings are brutal, grey cubes that jut angrily out of the earth, rock and sand cleared away for the lines of sidewalk that connect each area in Area 51 like a spider’s web of concrete.

Inside the lobby, people are busy busy busy, walking back and forth in all capacities. Some are wearing white lab coats, others are in suits, and others still are clicking their heels off to go do some typing behind their desks. Friends recognize and greet one another, strangers excuse each other they pass, and along the wall you and Gwen wait your turn to clock into work. The little hand proudly proclaims that you do have five minutes before you technically have to start, and Gwen gives you a devious little smile as you both walk arm in arm down to the ladies’ locker room.

You think it’s kind of funny, that all locker rooms look the same. Rows and rows of standard sized lockers stick out from the walls, creating little aisles almost. Gwen follows you to your lockers, which naturally are side by side, near the middle of the room. It’s perfect because it’s right near a window, and Gwen always cracks it just slightly so she can light up a skinny Virginia Slim and not stink up the place.

She’s not the only one who does it, but no one wants to get caught.

While she smokes, you stash your purse and lunch into the locker, grabbing your cardigan that you keep there at work and sliding your arms into it. It might be one hundred-degrees in the desert when the sun is up for the day, but inside the buildings they keep it at a chilly sixty degrees, and with all the water you deal with, the last thing you need is to be even colder.

“You got any plans tonight (Y/N)?” Gwen asks as she flicks her ash outside through the window, “I was thinking about going out to get my nails done when we finish up our shift.”

She glances at her cuticles, noticing the growth from the way the polish has begun to move away from her nailbed. You take a glance at your own nails, and while the invitation does sound enticing, you do indeed have plans.

“The Professor and I are going out to a movie, you should come with us! It’s not until the late evening, you’d have more than enough time to get a manicure beforehand.” You offer, making Gwen laugh fondly.

“You two and your movies, I swear. I don’t know anyone who loves them more than the pair of you. Why, I feel like you could both quote just about any musical from beginning to end.” She teases.

“Depending on the musical, we probably could.” You tease back, before you stand up and stretch the very last bits of sleep and laziness from your limbs. “I mean it though, you’re more than welcome to come with us.”

“I’ll pass this time honey, but count me in for the next one.” She promises, and you nod. “You want a puff?”

She offers you the cigarette but you nudge her hand away.

“No thank you, you know me, gotta keep these lungs clear so I can recite scripts on command.” You grin, and she only stubs out the butt of it onto the concrete wall, before tucking the thing in her pocket so no one could find it in the trash and get her in trouble.

“And they say I’m sarcastic.” She huffs, tying her apron around her waist.

Mrs. Parker, a strict not but necessarily unkind woman, enters the locker room at five o’clock on the dot. Everyone stands at attention for her at the end of the aisles created by the rows of lockers, and she has one of her assistants pass out clipboards to each of the women in the room.

“Alright ladies, time to start the day.” Mrs. Parker takes her job very seriously, as she should. It was not common for a woman to hold a management position the way she does, and you’re proud to be under her instruction. “Boss says since it’s a holiday tomorrow if you get everything on your checklist done and signed, you can clock out early.”

“What’s the holiday?” One of the other girls asks, as a slight murmur breaks out among them.

“Presidents Day.” Mrs. Parker replies. “So thank JFK for a nice end to the day – if you get everything finished that is.”

With that, she and her assistants leave the locker room. Once the door has closed, the women all talk among themselves, eager for the prospect of getting to go home sooner than anticipated. For many of them, their weekend is just beginning, and the thought of having more time to catch up on sleep or whatever else they want, is exciting.

Neither you nor Gwen have your weekends yet, and though the holidays may apply to everyone else, the two of you will still be expected to come into work the next day. There are different levels of clearance even within maids, you’ve found, and yours are some of the highest, which means you get to clean some of the most sensitive parts of the base.

For now though, Gwen reviews your clipboards. They’re always the same, because Mrs. Parker isn’t stupid and knows that you’re more productive together than you are apart. But still, she checks to make sure.

“I’m guessing we’ve just got floors to do today.” You say, adjusting your hair in the mirror.

“You guessed right.” Gwen nods, flipping through the pages. “Where should we start, the display room, communications, or the lab?”

“Makes the most sense to do it in that order, actually. I don’t feel like back-tracking.” You say, and she’s inclined to agree.

It’s not really called the display room. It’s got a proper name like everything else, D-3449 Exhibition Hall. This is one of the rooms that they bring all the important people to, it’s like a museum of sorts with pieces of new technology sitting on pillars and pedestals, large air craft suspended from the ceiling.

It’s more of a hangar than an exhibition hall, especially with how empty it is. The only people inside are the armed security that stand by the door, but they don’t speak. They’re instructed only to watch over the technology and that’s it.

“You would not believe the time I had trying to get new hubcaps for my car,” Gwen says as she slaps her wet mop against the marble tile, pushing suds around and scrubbing at the floor, “Remember how that piece of shit swiped my side and scuffed them something fierce? Well I figured I’d drive myself down to the dealership and ask their auto shop to replace it, and I inquired about any new designs. You know how they’re always coming out with new designs.”

“Did you ask for chrome?” You’re on your hands and knees with a little scraper, someone had tracked gum into the hanger and not bothered to wipe it up. It had hardened and now practically needed to be chiseled off the damn tile.

“Of course I asked for chrome, and do you know what the sleezy man at the dealer told me?” Gwen puts her hand on her hip, blowing a strand of hair out of her face.

“What?” You look up from the gum.

“He said men love women with chrome hubcaps, because they can see up her skirt through the reflection!” She scoffs.

“No way, that’s not real.” You go back to scraping, managing to get it all the way off in one blue sticky chunk that you dump into the trash at the end of your janitorial cart.

“Whether it’s real or not I wasn’t going to let it stop me, so I bought four new ones and had them put on.” Gwen says anyway, making you laugh.

“Gwen! You’re too much sometimes I tell you.” You shake your head, grabbing your mop and walking across the great big hangar to the other side so that you can mop that half. Though you are far apart, being the only ones in the room had its perks, and your voice carries when you joke, “This is why I don’t have a car.”

“Oh but you should get one, they’ve got all different colors and you can get ones with the tops that fold down so you can feel the sun on your face and – ” Gwen starts, unaware that you’re teasing.

“We live in the desert, the sun is always on our face.” You say as you’re careful to not box yourself in with the wet tile. “Besides, you only ever talk about how expensive your car is to fix, and how you have to fix it often. I’d much rather spend my money on other things.”

“Yeah like your shoes.” Gwen points to your feet, “Are those new?”

At the mention of your new heels, you strike a dramatic model pose.

“Do you like them? I saw them in the window and had to get them.” You beamed, showing the bottoms still mostly un-scuffed.

“Don’t tell me you’re breaking them in at work, your feet are going to fucking hate you for that.” Gwen whistles low, already feeling sorry for your ankles.

“My feet are going to hate me either way, might as well look nice.” You point out, and this at least Gwen understands.

From the hangar you move on to the communications room, which is exactly as it sounds. It’s an open office floor plan, with desks in neat lines. Two men in headphones sit at each desk, fiddling with nearly a hundred different buttons and looking at many small screens. No one pays you or Gwen any mind as you go about sweeping the floor, collecting any dust or specs of dirt that had accumulated since you’d been there yesterday.

In fact, everyone is so engrossed in their work that you’re not so sure they’d notice if you started screaming and jumping up and down. They’re monitoring the soundwaves and frequencies across the planet, right there in this room. There are enormous satellites pointed towards the sky nearly a mile away, four different ones pointing in each direction, and the communications personnel listens in on what the satellites send to their headphones.

You have your big dust broom and are walking in one direction between an aisle of desks, and Gwen is walking the opposite way on the other side.

“Sometimes I wonder what in God’s name goes on in this place, but then I think, if I want to sleep at night, it’s better to not know.” Gwen whispers, voice kept quiet so that she can’t be heard over the noise of whatever the personnel are listening to.

“Isn’t it obvious?” You whisper back, “They’re keeping aliens down in the basement labs.”

“Oh not this again.” Gwen groans, before lowering her voice again and hissing, “There is no such thing as aliens.”

“You can keep telling yourself that, Gwen, keep telling yourself that.” You grin, entirely too cheeky to be serious. “Look all I’m saying is why do we have big satellites pointing to the night sky and people listening in every second of every day?”

“To intercept the Russians, hello!” Gwen says as though it’s fairly obvious, and you grin as you sweep because now she’s really going on a tangent. “This is the United States government we’re talking about, they’re not going to waste their time on fairy-tales and conspiracies from lunatics on the street.”

“Then how do you explain the UFOs that people keep spotting?” You ask, waggling an eyebrow.

“Just because some people don’t know what a damn airplane looks like, doesn’t mean it’s something from outer space.” She says, and you put your hands up in mock-defeat.

“You’ve got to admit it is a pretty good conspiracy though,” You continue to be playful and difficult, not because you believe in any of this bullshit, not for real. But because it’s so easy to rile Gwen up with this sort of stuff, so you make a face and say, “Little green men with big black eyes and three fingers on each hand, like in those low-budget horror movies.”

“If that’s what aliens are supposed to look like, then I definitely don’t want them to be real.” She rolls her eyes and finishes sweeping the floor.

Your last stop of the day is the laboratory. It is deep underground, and requires two elevators to get to, so generally no one ever wants to visit, and no one ever wants to clean it. It’s not the most pleasant atmosphere to be, as there are no windows and nothing but steel doors as far as the eye can see.

You and Gwen have to scan into the lab using your ID cards, as the doors are bulletproof and heavy, a double sliding mechanism that moves slowly because of the weight of it. When they finally open, you’re confronted with a flurry of activity.

The normally peaceful lab is filled with people, mostly installation workers who are hooking up wires and pumps to a big fish tank that takes up most of the room. Your eyes widen in awe, the thing is massive and hadn’t been there yesterday, meaning the install workers had been there through the night putting it together.

They must have been working so hard that they had no qualms throwing all the packing materials for the hoses and wires and whatever else, right onto the floor.

“What the hell is this mess!” Gwendoline snaps as she pushes her cart through the open doors, you trailing behind. “Are you fucking kidding me, the trash can is right there!”

The men stop at the sound of her, and quickly scramble to start picking stuff up. They look like chastised young kids, being scolded by their mother, and that’s fitting considering how some of them barely look like they’re out of college.

“Sorry Gwen, we didn’t – ” One of them starts, but she gives him a glare that would have turned him to stone if he had looked any longer.

“No, I know you didn’t you never do.” She sighs, using her broom to sweep everything up, pushing it to one side so at least the majority of the floor is clear.

You assist her, throwing away all the plastic wrappers and sheets of card stock, breaking down boxes and sweeping up package insulation.

“What’s all this shit for anyway?” You wrestle a piece of foam board into the trash can on your cart.

“Yeah really, as if we don’t have a big enough fucking mess to deal with as it is – ” Gwen shoots the boys another glare and they all duck, embarrassed.

“Watch your profanity, Miss Gwendoline, and goodness lower your voice.” Your boss, Mr. Robert appears through the double doors just then. He’s one of those overly polite fellows, one of those people who says goodness gosh golly gee whizz. You can’t ever really take him seriously, but he’s in charge, so you do as he says, and so does Gwen.

“Sorry sir.” She casts her eyes down and returns to her sweeping, and you do the same.

“It’s alright, today is just a very important day.” Mr. Robert smooths his shirt down with his palms, before clapping his hands to draw everyone’s attention. “In a few moments, we will be welcoming a new team to our base. Accompanying this team is the most highly classified asset that we have ever obtained.”

Almost as if by magic, the thick steel walls slide open, revealing in a most dramatic fashion, a tall and thin Colonel, the only indication of his rank being a pin on his suit lapel. The man looks like a skeleton, with his high cheekbones and sunken in eyes, and his lips are stiffly frowning, so much so that you wonder whether his face would crack, if he were to smile. His hair is greying, but in a dignified manner, and it is well-kept, just as the rest of him seems to be.

Everyone in the room falls silent when his polished dress shoes click across the freshly swept floor, standing with their shoulders and chin squared, you and Gwen included.

“May I present Mr. Tarkin. He is the acting head of security regarding the Asset. His office will be next to mine in the administrative wing, should you have any concerns or are called for assistance. Mr. Tarkin?”

“Thank you Robert, your introduction is most welcome.” The colonel’s voice is exactly as you’d expect it, deep and gravely and more than a little sinister, although he gives a chilling smile when he says, “I have nothing more to add, other than the fact that anything you see here, anything at all, does not and never will exist. If you think you see something, hear or even smell something – you didn’t.”

“Is that understood?” Mr. Robert asks everyone in the lab, and you all nod.

“Yes sir.” You say in unison, cogs in the machine.

Suddenly, there is a commotion at the doors, as a team of armed security guards wheel in a massive steel tank. It looks like an iron lung, only bigger, far bigger. Everyone in the room is interested in it, but no one dare steps in the way of the security. It takes ten men on either side of the tank to move it into the lab, and though they certainly aren’t weak, they are visibly struggling with the Force of it.

It doesn’t help that whatever is inside the tank, isn’t happy. There is a harsh loud banging coming from within the steel, that low hollow echo as something pounds against it, bangs against it. You’re curious, so incredibly curious – you want to peer inside it, you want to know what it is. You’ve never seen anything like this before, never seen anything _alive_ before. So far you’ve only come across planes and engines, never ever anything like this.

They’ve wheeled it in front of Mr. Tarkin, who regards it with pride. You wonder if he’s the one who found whatever is inside, or if he’s just in charge of it. Either way, whatever it is must be some raging feral animal, to make the kind of banging slamming pounding noise it’s making.

There’s a pain in your chest for it, for the creature, because certainly something that upset must be wounded, or frightened, or both. The security team steps away from the tank once it is securely in the lab, and they leave, filing out in two straight lines. The thick steel doors open, and before they close, Robert gives you and Gwendoline the cue to leave.

You nod, knowing when you’re officially just no longer allowed to be somewhere. You both gather up your carts and silently make your way out of the lab, passing the tank as you go.

Your intrigue gets the better of you though, and as you pass the tank, you stop briefly. There’s a window made of bulletproof glass, spanning nearly the entire side of the thing. Glancing into it, all there is to see is a bright blue liquid. You can’t really tell if the liquid is illuminated, or if it’s glowing on its own with some sort of bioluminescent quality, but either way, the blue liquid is too thick to see through.

You place a hand on the glass, using that as leverage to peer in closer without falling forward, when a hand pushes through the blue liquid and slams forcefully against the glass, jolting you back.

_A flash of red fills the room. You blink and you are surrounded by the soft smooth endless velvet of blackness, the very same which populates your dreams. You’re close, so close, far closer to the red veil than you’ve ever been before, a hand outstretched, a hand reaching for you, before it –_

As soon as it comes, the memory of your dream is gone, and you are being held tightly in Gwendoline’s arms.

“They need to leave, now!” Mr. Tarkin barks orders at your boss, but you’re already nodding, already racing to get your shit and get out.

You wonder if you’re ill – if you’ve had a stroke, if you’ve accidentally ingested some cleaning fluid. Nothing like that has ever happened to you before, and you can’t fight the shudders that wrack through your body, nor can you ignore the sweat that freezes across your neck.

“Yes of course sir,” Gwendoline says as she leads you and the carts out of the lab, pushing you bodily with concerned panic on her face, “We’re sorry, sir.”

You keep your eyes trained on the tank, as you leave. Your heart is beating faster than it ever has, and even as Gwen nearly shoves you into the hallway, still you crane your neck to look at the tank, still your eyes widen as you desperately try to catch a glimpse of something, of whatever that thing was.

Before the doors close fully, you see a shadow of something...the shadow...of a man.

Gwendoline races you to the nearest bathroom, and you feel as though you’re going to be sick. Had it been a hand? A human hand? Or were you officially just losing your fucking mind?

Was that really a person in the tank? Why would they keep a human being in a tank like he were some new fish at an aquarium? It must have been so scared, pounding on the tank like that, over and over and over and over – and you do get sick then, just because you still have no idea why you hallucinated in the way that you did.

“(Y/N)!” Gwendoline has a soothing hand on your back as you’re hunched over one of the toilets, all remnants of your lunch burning your throat as it comes back up in your panic, “(Y/N) talk to me what the fuck happened in there?”

“I don’t – I’ve never – ” You choke out, coughing with your face against the porcelain.

Gwen leaves for a moment, only a moment, returning with a paper cup and fresh water from the tap.

“Deep breaths, here, drink this.” She offers it to you, and you eagerly take it, gulp it down as you grab a fistful of toilet paper to wipe your face. She is so concerned, you can read it on her face, and she takes the paper from your hand to get the rest of your own sick off where you can’t see it. “Are you okay? Do I need to call the hospital?”

“Gwen it,” You’re out of breath, heart still beating so quick that you’re lightheaded. “I don’t know what happened I, I think I blacked out.”

“You scared the shit out of me, one second you’re touching the glass, the next second you’re almost falling to the ground. Would have hit your head on the concrete if I wasn’t there to catch you, but your eyes were wide open.” She says, and you frown.

“They were?” You don’t know how that could be, because you were dreaming, and you can only dream when you’re asleep -- right?

“Yes, wide open but blank, kind of like those sharks, it was like you weren’t looking at anything in particular.” Gwen shakes her head and there are scared tears in her eyes, “I’m going to call the hospital – ”

“No,” You stop her, not wanting to have to deal with doctors and nurses for this, not when you don’t even know how you’d explain it. “No it’s okay. I feel better now, the water helped. I think I was just startled.”

“I’ve never seen you like that.” She whispers, “And I don’t want to again. If it happens a second time, I’m taking you and that’s not negotiable.”

You agree, and after you take a deep breath, you gesture to the bathroom around you.

“Since we’re here, we might as well clean.” You say. Clearly whoever was scheduled for this section of the hallway hadn’t gotten to it yet, and you didn’t want to face the world just yet.

“I’ll clean, you sit on the counter and just relax for a minute.” Gwen instructs, and you do as she says, hopping up onto the counter.

Gwen grabs a rag and a spray bottle and begins to wipe down the stalls, where she makes the mistake of looking up at the ceiling and groaning.

“Look at this, would you look at this?” She asks, pointing up. You squint but you can see the splatters on the cork ceiling tiles. “What were they doing, having a pissing contest up here? Isn’t this supposed to be the home of highly classified information and technology? Aren’t we supposed to have the best scientists and engineers?”

The door opens just then, and you immediately slide off the counter and adjust your dress, making way to grab your cart and leave. Gwendoline does the same upon the entrance of a man, as this is the men’s room, and though it’s your job to clean it, you are expected to give them privacy when someone is using the facility.

Especially when that someone is the Colonel, the new head of security regarding the new highly classified and top secret asset.

“No,” Mr. Tarkin says, as he approaches the counter, “No that’s alright, you don’t have to leave.”

He’s carrying something, a long baton made of black metal. He rests it on the counter and sets to washing his hands, using exactly six pumps of soap from the dispenser near the sink.

“Are you certain, sir?” You say, avoiding eye contact. “Our work can wait.”

“I’m certain. Don’t mind me, I won’t take but a moment. Please, carry on with your conversation, I don’t want to interrupt.” He waves it off, fastidiously scrubbing at his palms.

Once his hands are clean, he steps to the side and unzips his pants. Both you and Gwen quickly look away, embarrassed and in absolutely no mood to catch a flash of this guy’s dick. Instead, your gaze turns towards the baton, which seems to almost be humming there on the counter.

“Nifty little toy, isn’t it?” Mr. Tarkin catches you regarding it, and he smiles down at the baton like it were his newborn baby, fondness in his eyes that is incongruent with what it is when he tells you, “State of the art, high-voltage electric shock cattle-prod. But don’t tell anyone I told you.”

You and Gwendoline exchange a glance, what the fuck were they using electric shock on?

“I saw you both in T-4, didn’t I?” Mr. Tarkin hums, as he puts his hands on his hips and pisses right in front of you, “You’re the one who touched the tank.”

“Yes sir, I apologize, I don’t know what came over me.” You reply, trying your absolute best to not die of embarrassment and disgust.

“Humans are naturally curious, don’t worry. I’m just glad you’re alright.” He says, strangely sympathetic before asking, “Doesn’t it get lonely? The graveyard shift, I mean.”

“It gets quiet.” Gwendoline answers, strangely serious in her own way. She doesn’t like this man, you can tell.

Neither do you.

He hits the button on top of the urinal to flush and zips up his pants, making his way back to the sink.

“Well, hopefully things stay quiet – if you catch my meaning.” He winks.

“Yes sir, here.” Gwendoline offers him a hot towel for him to use when he’s finished washing his hands, but he doesn’t take it.

“Oh no thank you, a man washes his hands before or after tending to his needs. You can find out a lot about a man by the way he does it, what’s important to him. If he does it both times, it only points to a flaw in character, a weakness.” He explains with logic that makes no sense. “I think you’ll find I’m not a weak man.”

You find him a self-absorbed idiot, but you’d never say that out loud.

He picks up the baton, the cattle-prod, and exits the bathroom, catching the door with his hand before it closes fully and giving another one of those chilling smiles when he says, “It was very pleasant talking with you ladies.”

The second the door is closed, Gwen has her spray bottle and rag turned onto the door, scrubbing away where the man’s dirty hands have touched the steel.

“What a creep.” She mutters under her breath, and you hum out an agreement before gasping.

“Gwen, look.” You’ve caught sight of smeared blood, blood that had come from the baton itself. It was bad enough that they were electrocuting the creature, but now they were making it bleed too?

You and Gwen look at one another, and she just shrugs and hands you a rag too.

* * *

Some time later, you’re walking down the hall pushing your carts, reviewing the clipboard. Each and every task has been crossed off, and it was nearly only lunch time. Well, maybe it wasn’t exactly lunch time for the rest of the world, ten o’clock in the morning and all. But you were feeling good about it, thinking to yourself that if you can just hold on a little longer, you’ll be able to go out to lunch with Armitage when you get off the buses that will bring you back home.

Gwen is in an equally good mood, no doubt wishing that she could clock out early more often.

“I can see my own smile in these floors, we do such a damn good job, don’t we? Do you think Mrs. Parker will sign off on our forms so we can go?” She has a spring in her step as you both round the corner – right into Mr. Robert.

“(Y/N)! Gwendoline!” He looks frantic, looks terrified, is holding a napkin up to his face, mopping up the profuse amount of swear on his brow, “You need to come with me, now.”

“Sir, we were just about to pack up and leave actually – ” Gwendoline says, but your boss doesn’t care.

“Now!” He insists, and you have no choice but to follow suit.

Soon enough, it’s clear as to why.

Down the dark windowless halls and through the elevators you find yourselves in front of the lab once again, where there is a mess of blood all across the tile. So much blood in fact, that you’re nearly positive whatever has happened here has been fatal, because there’s just no way someone survived from this much loss.

Mr. Roberts scans in and the doors open, revealing an even bigger mess on the inside.

“You have exactly twenty minutes to get this lab spotless, do you understand me? Twenty minutes.” Mr. Roberts looks at you, and you nod, because you know you can get it done.

He leaves without another word, and the moment the doors close, Gwen groans.

“This is a lot of blood.” She states the obvious, grabbing buckets and filling them with water from one of the lab sinks. “You know, I can handle a lot of things. I can handle piss, throw up, hell, even shit. I can handle shit. But something about blood sets me off.” She shudders.

“Give me a bucket, the sooner we get this place mopped up the sooner we can leave.” You reach for one and she gives it to you.

You dump the entire bucket on the floor, and in the shallow wake of the murky water, a pair of fingers rolls out from underneath a large storage cabinet.

“No fucking way,” You gasp, bending down to pick the appendages up, “Fingers.”

“Fingers!?” Gwen covers her mouth, fully disgusted. “Okay, you stay here, I’m going to get Robert.”

The moment the steel doors close behind her, you sigh. What could have gone on here, you wonder, to have Robert in such a state? And the fingers, well clearly they had to belong to someone, which meant the blood had to as well. But there had been blood on Mr. Tarkin’s baton, the cattle-prod, whatever he wanted to call it, hadn’t there?

Your stomach sinks at the thought that whatever the creature Mr. Tarkin has captured, bleeds just like all of you.

A low dull thunk comes from the tank, and you turn around slowly to face it.

Against all your better instincts, you turn to face it.

Where the tank was once empty, now there is something pushing through the fluorescent blue, something making its way closer to the glass. It is not screaming this time, nor is it banging its fists on the walls of the tank, and you drop the fingers, one hand outstretched.

You approach the glass, heart pounding pounding pounding, blood rushing in your ears, because it _is_ a man, from what you can tell.

It’s not clear, not perfectly clear inside the tank, but you see a head and a wide torso, long thick legs and strong arms. He’s wearing some sort of breathing mask which obscures his face almost entirely, an apparatus that reminds you very much of the kinds that scuba divers wear, and he’s got a heavy looking metal collar clasped tightly around his throat.

It looks like a shock collar, but you’re not sure, you’re not sure of anything.

Though it is hard to see, there are definite wounds marking his body, fresh ones that speak to the blood all over the floor. You suck in a breath and just as you had done earlier, you place a hand against the glass of the tank.

This time when he – because it _is_ a he and not an it – puts his palm against the glass from his own side, you don’t black out. You sigh with relief, and take another step closer to the glass, trying to get a better look at him when –

“Right this way Mr. Robert, yes two fingers.” Gwen’s voice carries into the room as the doors open for her and your boss.

You quickly yank your hand away from the tank and turn towards them, about to beckon her forward to show her the man in the tank, but when you look back through the glass, it’s empty. Nothing but the blue liquid as far as you can see.

In your pocket is a brown paper bag and you stuff the fingers inside it, folding the top down like a lunch parcel.

“Where are the body parts?” Mr. Roberts sweats, nervous nervous nervous.

“Here sir,” You give them over, explaining when he looks confused, “I’ve wrapped them for you.”

“You both can clock out and go home, I’ll sign your lists personally.” Mr. Roberts accepts the paper bag, and walks over to your carts where the clipboards rest nestled in amongst the bottles of cleaners and wipes. “And don’t worry about coming in tomorrow, the holiday applies to you as well. Go get some sleep.”

“Thank you sir! We very much appreciate that.” Gwendoline can barely contain her excitement at that.

“Well I appreciate you.” He stammers, genuinely grateful. “I don’t know anyone who can clean as well as quickly as you.”

He gives you a smile, and then rushes out of the lab with the paper bag, no doubt to the hospital.

* * *

Hours later, after you and Armitage have shared some lunch and you’ve bathed in the Nevada summer sun on your balcony, after the home cooked dinner he makes you and the movie you watch together downstairs at the cinema, when it’s officially late once again and Armitage is asleep in his bed, you slip into the hallway.

Careful to close your front door quietly, you tip-toe down the stairs at the end of the hall, the only real sound are the dimes jingling in your pocket.

There is a phone booth right on the corner, and no one pays you any mind as you step inside it, closing the glass door behind you. You drop the dime into the payphone, and when the operator tone buzzes, you dial the number on the rotary, memorized but never written down.

The line rings once, twice, three times, before someone on the other end of the line picks it up.

“She speaks to the earth with a loud voice.” You say evenly and clearly.

You look around, check over your shoulder, make sure that no one is watching or listening in on you, making sure no one is trailing you. When you find no such person, you relax a little.

“And the earth shouts back.” The man on the other end of the line finishes the code, before switching to his mother tongue and saying, “Go ahead.”

“They’ve got a hold of something,” You cannot refrain from letting some of the awe pollute your news, even in this language which feels thick in your mouth, your Russian sticking in your throat, emotional as you whisper, “Something _incredible_.”


	2. A Promise to the Stars

“They did _what?_ ” Armitage asks, eyebrows raised high as you walk arm in arm down the street to your favorite diner.

Your dreams had been quiet, uneventful during the night. It was almost a disappointment that there was no sign of him, of the figure just beyond the door. You had so been hoping to see him, to get a better glimpse of his face. It was almost a disappointment that there was no dream at all.

Until you remembered that you had been given the day off as a reward for helping in the lab, a reward for keeping your head down and not asking too many questions. And as it was your day off, Armitage had all but demanded that you spend the day together, as was tradition whenever you managed to get a break in your schedule.

So, the light of late morning warms your skin as you count the cracks in the sidewalk, sunglasses that nearly never get any use perched on your nose as you tell your friend of all that happened the day before.

“They kidnapped someone! An actual human person, ‘Tidge!” You’re careful to keep your voice down, careful to not gesture too wildly as to attract attention as you recount the sight of the lab in the state you and Gwen had been given it. “They’re torturing him, there was blood all over the place.”

Armitage isn’t so convinced, not nearly as convinced as you were that something cruel was taking place. He opens the door for you and shakes his head when you look at him expectantly.

“This is the United States government you’re talking about, they would never do something like that.” Armitage says quietly yet firmly, the both of you especially careful now that you were in an enclosed space with other patrons around. “They must have just found him like that.”

You roll your eyes fondly at your friend – the man could be so blind sometimes, patriotism clouding all his judgements. You blame him father for that, but you don’t dare say it out loud.

“No, you don’t understand, I saw him when they first brought him in and he was fine but it was like…” You say instead, trying to make your point and then eventually falling flat. “I don’t know. I don’t know what it was like. They call him the Asset, they want something from him, to use him somehow. It doesn’t feel Kosher.”

Armitage doesn’t have anything to say about that, electing to pick a booth against the window.

You always had a habit of sitting at the same booth every time the two of you went to the diner; it had the most perfect view of the street and Armitage adored people-watching. He liked to comment on the fashions of those who were so unfortunate to pass by his line of vision, making all sorts of scathing remarks on the mixing of patterns and colors.

He had asked you for your opinions on his outfit today, as he tends to do every day when time isn’t of the essence. Always stylish in an understated manner, Armitage was. Even on his day off like this, he was in a suit. You wonder how he does it sometimes, the heat of the Nevada desert beating down on him like this, in his light grey pleated trousers and matching jacket. His vest and tie matched, a grassy green color that complimented his eyes.

You weren’t nearly as concerned, dressed in some light-weight cotton garments in a fashionable cut. You did however opt for a pair of sandals on this excursion out into the daytime world, not having much opportunity to wear them as open-toed shoes were forbidden at work.

The waitress comes over, and she’s a familiar face that you’re eager to see.

“Good morning Professor, (Y/N)! Coffee?” You’ve always liked her, this happy-go-lucky high school girl who will probably take over the diner when she graduates in a year.

You wonder if you were ever so chipper as a junior as you flip through the menu, not having had a chance to spare it a glance yet.

“Yes please, the usual for me and (Y/N) will have the special.” Armitage doesn’t bother looking at her, too occupied with his silent, and sometimes not so silent, judgements of the world outside.

“I don’t like when you order for me, you know that.” You pinch the back of his hand and close the menu.

“Is the special alright?” The waitress asks, and you turn your charms back on her.

“The special’s fine, thank you.” You say, the two of you sharing a smile at the expense of your friend.

When she leaves and comes back with coffee, you and Armitage cheers to a lazy day off, both enjoying the holiday. You doctor it how you like it, and then you too return your gaze out the window while you wait for your food.

It’s so interesting, to see the world during the day.

Sometimes you forget, forget that not everyone has such a bizarre schedule. People are walking their dogs, others are pushing children in strollers. Some are sharing a cigarette by the fire hydrant, and some are reading the newspaper at the bus stop. Cars honk at one another in a friendly and not so friendly manner, and you can’t help but wonder if the man in the tank were free, how he would spend his morning.

You wonder where he comes from, if he would enjoy the summer heat, or if he’s used to a much cooler climate. 

“What does he look like?” Armitage asks, apropos of nothing, as if he reads your mind while he sips his coffee, before clarifying as if you didn’t already know, “The Asset?”

You shrug, annoyed at yourself for not having the chance to get a better look.

“It was hard to tell, he was strapped into a breathing mask – and this awful collar, it looks like he’s in shackles. They’ve got him in this aquarium like he’s some fish.” You try explaining, tapping your finger against the glass of the window in that way that all the zoos tell you not to. “Except it’s not water that’s in the tank, I don’t know, it’s like they poured jell-o all over him, I couldn’t get a good grasp of him.”

“Must be one exotic fish.” Armitage scoffs into his coffee, and you want to have a banter with him but something in your chest aches with the way the man had seemed so sad.

“He looked lonely.” You say, sipping your coffee and watching a group of kids play in the street, their laughs muted through the glass. You wonder if there are people missing him, people looking for him, wherever he comes from.

Armitage knows that tone of your voice, it’s the same one that’s convinced him to rescue small animals or strays before, it’s the reason he’s got an exceptionally spoiled cat. 

“Don’t go falling in love with him,” He warns, pointing his spoon at you aggressively, “They have him for a reason, and if you’re right then it must mean he’s dangerous.”

“I won’t, but I don’t know...” You bat the spoon away, right as the waitress comes back with your breakfast.

“One special and your usual, enjoy.” She says, lightening the mood and changing the atmosphere once again.

This wasn’t the time or place to really have this conversation, you both know. So instead you dig in, enjoying a delicious breakfast at the proper breakfast time, for the first time in…well you don’t know how long.

“I was thinking, maybe we could go to the park.” You suggest, hopeful that he’ll agree. “It’s been a long time since I’ve let the sun properly on my skin.”

Armitage gives you a strange look then, as he cuts into his egg white omelet, and you respond with a look of your own.

“You worry me sometimes, you know?” He says, not really a real question.

“What do you mean?” You frown; Armitage wasn’t really one to worry, not in the typical sense. He worried about the intelligence of his students, the health of his mother, and that was about it.

“People need the sunshine, drives us crazy if we don’t get it – it’s been scientifically proven don’t give me that look.” He cuts himself off when you start to roll your eyes at his spiel, or the beginning of it anyway.

“I’m not going to go crazy, I promise.” You stop him in his tracks, an argument you’ve had too many times with him that you wonder if he’ll ever learn to let go.

From the way his brow is set, you know that he probably won’t.

“Have you ever thought about maybe a different job? You could work with me, at the University.” Armitage doesn’t beat around the bush, “They’re always in need of secretaries, hell, you get a degree and you could teach, god knows you’re smarter than some of the adjuncts there and – ”

“And pull my hair out trying to teach snot-nosed brats who think they know it all because they’ve taken one philosophy course?” You challenge.

Armitage shakes his head and sighs, strikes up a cigarette and lets the smoke waft about, clinging and curling against the sunny window.

“I just don’t know why you’re wasting yourself away at the…airport.” He says carefully, and you bristle at that insinuation.

“I don’t consider it a waste.” Is all you say.

He doesn’t know, he can’t know, why you’re really there. You can’t tell him, because then you’d have to kill him, and you really do value him as a very good friend. You weren’t afforded many friends, and you didn’t want to lose him, so you bring the conversation back to your original question that had gotten so derailed, “Can we go to the park?”

And if Armitage suspects, if he _thinks_ he knows there’s something else going on, he at least has the sense of self-preservation to drop the subject entirely. He eats his omelet and drinks his coffee and smokes his cigarette.

“We can go to the park. I’ll even put the convertible top down, we can drive with the wind in our hair.” He smiles at you, a measured smile, one that just barely reaches his eyes.

You put your hand over his own, a small gesture of appreciation.

“Thank you.” You say sincerely, for his understanding of things known and unknown, and the two of you turn to your breakfasts and continue to judge the town outside.

* * *

The park is bustling with activity, when Armitage turns the car off in the nearly full lot.

The holiday gave everyone a chance for some much-needed fun, it would seem. There were families and friends of all ages enjoying the summer sun, dressed all in bright vibrant colors and patterns as they ran about. You and Armitage were set up on a large picnic blanket out in the open, not bothering to look for a spot with a shady tree when the whole point was to soak up the rays as much as you could.

Armitage had brought a couple books with him, and was busy skimming through them, marking and highlighting little passages here and there. You can’t help but smile at the titles, each one relating to the relationship between war and cinema in some way, the grandeur of the military as it’s portrayed.

Unsurprising, but still amusing nonetheless.

What’s even more amusing though, is how Armitage seems to be paying very little attention to the books at hand. You know he must see you looking at him, as he looks over the tops of his books at the group of handsome men romping about in shorts too short.

There’s a friendly game of frisbee in action, some yards away from where you’re lounging in the sun and he’s reading. The men must be in their late twenties, possibly college students but maybe not. They’ve got a cooler of glass bottles of some kind, whether it’s beer or colas you’re not sure, but Armitage certainly looks like he could use a drink, with the way he keeps having to swallow.

“Like what you see?” You tease, and he immediately snaps his book closed.

“Shut up.” He hisses, scowling at you.

“You could offer to play, I’m sure they’d be thrilled to have one more in their company.” You disregard his sour mood at being caught, and encourage him to go live a little.

“I don’t know.” Armitage shakes his head, despite already taking off his suit jacket, revealing the blue vest and white shirt underneath as he complains, “I’m old.”

“You’re thirty-five, that’s not old!” You sit up enough to nudge him happily, “And not much older than them, by the looks of it. The worst they can do is say no.”

You stare at one another for a little while, before he relents.

“Alright, alright fuck, fine. I’ll go ask.” He says, getting up and brushing off imaginary dirt from his trousers while he steps out of his shiny dress shoes and socks.

You yourself have removed your sandals, happy to feel the earth under your feet for the short walk that you had taken across the lawns of the park.

“Proud of you! And if they reject you I’ll only tease you a little for it.” You call after him playfully as he jogs lightly over to the group of men, who pause their playing to greet him.

You wait with bated breath as you watch them talking, and break into a big grin when Armitage turns around and gives you a thumbs up with a wide smile – the first time you’ve seen him so openly happy in a while.

Armitage may worry about you all he likes, but you worry about him too. You worry that his only friend is you, worry that he doesn’t have anyone to call his own, aside from the cats he so adores. You worry what would happen to him, if you were to one day leave.

But that’s a train of thought you blink out of your mind. You weren’t planning on going anywhere, and for now, it’s nice to see him enjoying himself, you think, as he is assigned a frisbee team and the game resumes.

You almost feel like a proud mom, convincing him to go socialize like this. But you can only watch him from across the park for so long, so while he runs about chasing a disc of purple plastic with men who laugh with him and cheer him on, you dig into your purse and pull out a notebook.

If anyone were to look inside the notebook, it would appear absolute gibberish to them. Nothing but loops in long succession, possibly the result of someone’s bored imagination, a hand needing to move while the mind wanders.

To those who knew what to look for, they’d be able to see these were notes, extremely specific and thorough, simply recorded in the script of another language.

You hadn’t had a chance yet to record the Asset in the notebook, and you take the opportunity to do so while Armitage is distracted. Your blue fountain pen glides easily over the lined paper as you map out the timeline of the Asset’s arrival, his containment, the team that brought him.

You get lost in the details of it, and soon you find yourself getting lost in the thought of him.

Who was he? Why was he there? How long would he be there? You wonder what the hell the jell-o is and why he needs it, why he’s shackled in the way he is.

He looked handsome, you think, when you had gotten that one glimpse of him. You weren’t sure how handsome someone could be with half their face obstructed by a mask and the rest filtered through thick blue slime, but something told you he was handsome. You don’t include that part in the notes.

You wonder how he had sliced off those fingers – because clearly it had to have been him. Which meant that he must have been removed from the tank for some period of time, enough time to get aggressive. Your heart began to beat quickly at the thought of that, the thought of a display of power. He was large, so large, you could tell from the form of his body in the tank, such a display of aggression must have been remarkable.

Then – suddenly and out of nowhere, your vision goes black.

You feel like you’re falling for a moment, a split second, darkness all around you.

You try to open your mouth to speak, to scream to yell shout call for help, something, but you find your lips won’t move.

Then it’s not black, not any longer – it’s red, bright vibrant red, crackling energy that’s searing hot, unstable and angry, so angry. The world around you is filled with it, with this flame which burns too strongly, and you wonder if it’s really a flame at all.

You feel nothing but sheer terror, intense pain. It’s so painful that you almost worry you’re having some sort of organ failure, your body collapsing in on itself. Searing hot blinding pain that hisses through you, your stomach boiling.

But when you blink, you’re just as you were, sitting on the picnic blanket in the park.

Your hands immediately reach to your stomach, looking for an injury, looking for _anything,_ but you are perfectly fine. The pain was only a phantom, a ghost, but whose you aren’t sure.

You’re covered in a cold sweat, and as it dries you shiver, a shaking hand reaching into your picnic basket. What was the time, how long had you been there, at the park? Your sugar must be low, that’s all, that must be the explanation for this dizzying pounding headache you were now saddled with.

The sun suddenly seems too bright, the breeze too windy, the park too loud. You want to go home, want to curl up in your bed and sleep, want to – you don’t know. You don’t know what you want, you don’t know what will fix this. You don’t know why now all of a sudden these dizzy spells are hitting you, especially two days in a row. Maybe you’ll go to the doctor, get yourself checked out.

Maybe not.

You pull out a small paper bag of some citrus fruits, small clementines that were perfectly ripe and juicy. You love the fruit, but you hate peeling it, the chunks of outer rind always coming off in ugly pieces instead of a nice smooth spiral like some larger oranges.

Eating helps, you chew methodically and really savor each segment of the fruit, the juice of it trickling down onto your chin which you wipe away with the back of your hand. You try to calm yourself and watch Armitage play happily with the men, waving to him when he casts a grin over his shoulder to you to show off his catch of the frisbee.

Eventually, you’re fine once again, the sudden blip of the vision no more than a dull throb in the base of your skull, and you lay back down onto the picnic blanket and look up with a sigh. The clouds are fluffy and white, stretching as far as the eye can see across the powder blue sky.

You look for shapes in the clouds, until a flushed face obstructs your vision, a bright eyed and smiling Professor who sits himself back down on the blanket, jostling you slightly.

“Did you win?” You ask, rolling onto your side and regarding his appearance as you prop your head up on your elbow. Somewhere along the way he had taken off his vest and tie, rolled his sleeves up. It was a good look on him, this casual attire.

“No, but that’s alright, I had a lot of fun anyway.” He says, smiling to himself.

You raise an eyebrow and he pulls out a small slip of paper, one with a carefully written phone number across it in slightly smudged ink, that has you gasping and congratulating him for a moment, reaching for the paper with grabby hands to get a better look.

You wonder which of the men gave it to him, which had been so bold. You cast your gaze over to the men who were now packing up their own belongings, having had enough fun for the day. One in particular, a handsome brunette, can’t stop smiling in Armitage’s direction, and joy bubbles up in your chest for your friend.

It was still something to be careful about, you know. You hate it, hate how secretive so many people had to be. You hope that one day, one day soon, people will rise up the same way they are for civil rights, and like racism they combat the homophobia that runs deep through the country.

There was much to be combatted, throughout the country, you think bitterly to yourself for a moment, before turning your attention to your friend once more.

“You must use an absurd amount of gel for your hair to still be that perfect after running around all afternoon.” You tease, pretending to knock on the hard shell of his somehow still immaculate hair.

“I use the exact correct amount.” He waves your hand away with a blush that brings out his freckles, before checking his watch and mulling the time over in his head. “Are you ready to go? You really should get some sleep.”

“You’re right, and there’s some laundry I’ve been meaning to tend to. I hate being a grown-up sometimes. Laundry never fucking ends, does it? Even when I’ve folded and washed all that I’ve got, I still have to wash and fold what I’m wearing.” You complain in agreement, that feeling of wanting to go home returning ten-fold.

“Maybe we should run away to a nudist colony.” Armitage offers, and you laugh as you pack up your things.

“Now there’s an idea.” You say, before linking arms with him and walking back to his car.

* * *

You had grown to love the apartment, over the years.

When you had first moved in it was an empty barren space, no furniture or decorations to speak of. Boris had been so excited to find an interested renter for the place, that he had given you a reduced price as incentive and you were grateful for that because it had allowed you to put some money towards sprucing up the place.

You remember the early days, back when all you had was a mattress on the floor and a single frying pan to your name, having traveled here with nothing more than the clothes on your back and a briefcase of paperwork.

But now, now that it had been some time, the apartment felt less like an old storage space above a movie theater, and more like a home.

You had completely re-wallpapered the faded and ugly grey drywall, had polished and waxed the hardwood floors. The furniture was exactly to your taste, and it felt lived in, with things all over. Not overly cluttered, not more than you needed, but enough to be a place of comfort, your own little sanctuary.

It's not very big, not the largest but it’s also not the smallest. When you first walk in there’s the living room with the TV you adore set into a big wall-unit covered in trinkets and things that make you smile. To the right is a small closet of your clothing and beyond that is the master bedroom, large enough that it could really be a secondary living room, should you ever want to switch up the layout. On the other side of the living room is the bathroom, fitted with a leaky clawfoot tub that you always swear you’re going to get fixed, and through a door to the left is the kitchen.

You didn’t use your kitchen much, opting to cook your few meals at home in Armitage’s place, as he had a much larger area for dining. You didn’t mind your own small space, but why cramp yourself when your best friend next door had counter-tops for days? In fact, the only times you really are in your kitchen are to brew a pot of coffee on the stove, and to pass through the sliding glass door to the balcony where you spend much of your time catching those last bits of sun.

You almost want to tell him that you get plenty of Vitamin D from your sun naps, but it’s not important. He’s already said goodnight and returned to his own apartment for the rest of the day, as was your usual tradition. Armitage has always been very good about maintaining a strict schedule, leftover from his upbringing you suppose – although it’s something so intrinsically _Armitage_ that you’re sure he’d be a sticker for schedules no matter how he had been raised.

The apartment is buttery gold with late afternoon sun that comes through all the open curtains around the windows, but you can’t stop yourself from yawning. You don’t need to look at the clock to know it must be nearing five o’clock, your body telling you to get some shut eye all on its own. You both know that once two in the morning rolls around, your alarm will go off and he’ll be pissed, and you’ll soothe him with coffee once more, back to the routine you’re used to.

You put on a soft 45 and turn the volume on the record player down low as you fold what’s left of your laundry, a basket or two having been washed a few days before that you never got around to. You hum and dance slightly to it, an old movie soundtrack you adore. You never cared much for films or musicals before moving into this apartment, where it was nearly unavoidable to escape.

But like most other things, you’d been here long enough that between being friends with Armitage, and living in the place you did, you had such an affection for film that now you can’t imagine yourself without it. 

Once the last apron and pair of socks have been folded, you take your notebook out of your purse and walk it to the foyer of the apartment. There underneath the welcome mat, you lift a loose panel of the floorboard, and pull out a tin box.

You place the notebook among the blueprints and maps of your work, photographs and photocopied memos nestling underneath it. You’ll hand all this information over soon, you know. But until then, back under the floorboard the tin box stays, and off to sleep you go.

* * *

All too soon, you find yourself waiting for the bus once more.

The night is warm, but not so hot that it’s uncomfortable. Night-time in the desert wasn’t so harsh as it was during the day, and could actually get quite chilly on occasion, something that you were very surprised to learn when you first moved to Vegas. You’re in your uniform, belly full of coffee and bags slung on your shoulder, pleasantly watching the night-life around you and waiting for Mr. Henry to arrive.

You don’t have to wait long, the bus rounding the corner and coming to a hissing stop exactly on time.

As per usual, you take your seat and enjoy the emptiness of the bus.

“Missed you last night (Y/N)!” The kind bus driver is happy to see you, and that warms your heart.

“I know I’m sorry, I had an unexpected day off if you can believe.” You say, making his eyebrows shoot up as he pulls away from the stop when it’s clear no other passengers are2 getting on.

“You know I used to think you were a vampire, never seeing you out and about in the daytime and all?” Mr. Henry jokes, glancing at you through the rear-view mirror as he navigates the minor traffic. 

“Vampires don’t exist, Mr. Henry, you know that.” You smile, pillowing your head against the window. You always put down a little cushion of sorts, whether it’s your hat that day or a sweater, or even your bag. You find that if you don’t, your head bounces and rattles against the glass, and it’s not the most pleasant feeling.

“Can’t an old man have a little imagination?” Mr. Henry laughs to himself, a dry chuckle that only makes you want to give him a hug, even more-so when he asks, “How’s that friend of yours, Professor Hux?”

“He’s good! Very excited that the summer session is almost over, the students this time around are giving him some grief.” You’re glad to talk about him, being around Armitage always gave you funny anecdotes whether he knew it or not. “He calls them incompetent and says that all of their IQs put together wouldn’t be enough to register on the scale.”

That brings about an even bigger laugh from the kind driver, one that draws a cough out of him.

“Well not everyone can live above a twenty-four-hour movie theater like him.” He clears his throat and you attempt to bring the mood down to something less rowdy, not wanting your friend to injure himself accidentally.

“No, we certainly are very lucky.” You say, suddenly curious about something. “Where do you live, Mr. Henry?”

“Oh not far, my wife and I have a home in the suburbs just outside of town. She didn’t want to be in the city with all the craziness. I don’t blame her, with some of the things I see on my routes.” He gestures with one hand at a red light, out at the street.

The Vegas Strip was known for being extravagant, showgirls and gambling and far too much alcohol. It was flashy, with its neon lights and pulsing golden bulbs, but it had an underbelly that a good sensible woman like Odette shouldn’t be exposed to.

“I don’t blame her either.” You agree. Sometimes you think about the brawls you pass on the way to the bus exchange, you think about the people passed out drunk or drugged up on the sidewalks or in alleys.

You don’t think about it much now though.

“It’s nice, quiet where we live. Me and her, we were thinkin’ of having ourselves a garden, we’ve got a little piece of the backyard already squared away for it.” Mr. Henry talks in that friendly way of his, and you’re happy to make conversation.

“I’m surprised you can grow anything, with the soil being so sandy like it is here.” You remark honestly.

“There’s lots that you can grow in the desert! Carrots, beets, all sorts of peppers and melons and corn.” Mr. Henry says, and you have a feeling he’d make a magnificent garden, even if by sheer passion alone.

“Maybe I’ll join you, I’ve got a balcony, maybe I’ll get myself a pot of soil and grow some tomatoes. I can trade you for some beets.” You smile at him as he approaches a stop which has quite a few people on it.

“Sounds like a plan to me.” He replies, before the two of you retreat to silence so as to not disturb the many new passengers which board his bus.

Running and weaving your way through the crowd at the exchange, you once again narrowly make the departure time of your second bus. Gwen as always holds your seat for you, and as always she snaps at the woman who complains.

In the very back row of the bus, you hug one another in greeting, and you pour her a thermos of coffee which she eagerly chugs. Sometimes you wonder how she can stand to do that, with it still so piping hot as it is, but then again, very little deters Gwen when she wants something.

“What did you do yesterday?” You ask by way of starting the conversation as Gwen shuffles a deck of cards in her lap.

“I slept!” She laughed, as if that were the height of luxury. “God it felt so fucking good to sleep without the alarm clock ringing in my damn ear, let me tell you. What about you? Did you get some sleep?”

“We went to the diner and the park, I took a bit of a nap in the sunshine, but the place was fucking packed with people, seems like everyone had the same idea to go spend the holiday in the fresh air. Armitage even made some new friends.” You say with a smile, and Gwen can only smile back.

“He wasn’t the only one.” She is filled with a nervous sort of excitement, one that you don’t normally get to see on your friend.

“Oh?” You prompt, nosy and curious.

“I went out for a car wash, and wouldn’t you know it but that pretty red head who works in the observation building? She was there too, and we wound up talking for the whole time they were caring for our cars.” Gwen can’t get the smile off her face, one that makes her cheeks pink up as she shuffles and re-shuffles the deck.

“There’s lots of pretty red heads in the observation building. Secretary?” You note, trying to figure out which one she means.

“No, custodial like us.” Gwen corrects, and it clicks in your brain. 

“Oh, Mary.” You nod, knowing exactly which pretty red head has caught Gwen’s eye.

Not a bad choice at all, you think to yourself.

“Yes! Shit it was so awkward, I knew I knew her name and she knew mine but we’ve never actually been introduced and I didn’t want to call her a name that wasn’t actually hers, you know? We both did our best not to embarrass the other – you would have laughed at us you’re so good with names.” Gwen deals the cards and she’s right, you do laugh and tease your friend good-naturedly.

“No I’m not, you’re just _really_ bad.” You nudge her with your elbow, and she swats at your shoulder with a big grin.

The bus ride was uneventful, and before you knew it, the passengers all trickled out one by one. The bus emptied nicely, steadily, enough that you and Gwen could spread out just a small bit, not so squished against one another.

It’s still dark out when the driver bulls over to the side of the road, so dark and so far away from the city that you can see a thousand stars up there in the night sky. It makes your chest ache, missing the dream that didn’t come once again. You felt like you were on the precipice of something with it, had hoped that maybe while you slept you’d get to walk among those stars.

But it hadn’t come, and you don’t remember if you dreamt or not, so the best you can get is glancing out the window up at the constellations above, as the bus driver clears his throat.

“Identification?” He glances at you, and almost on auto-pilot you hold up your card from the back of the bus.

“Just for you.” Gwen says as she holds her up too.

That earns you a chuckle from the driver, and he pulls back onto the main road.

Sometimes you wonder what would happen, if there were a stowaway. If someone were to just not get off at their stop. He is armed, you know that – everyone in connection to the base’s security was armed. But would this kindly bus driver gun someone down for perhaps falling asleep from the early hour and missing their stop?

You rest your head against the window and look up at the constellations. They seem so bright, though they are so far away. You’ve always had an affinity for space, the final frontier. It’s what made this job so appealing, among other things. You got to learn, learn _so_ much about the great expanse of the universe. Silently observing and taking in the grandeur of the galaxy.

* * *

You’re still thinking about it, about space, when you arrive at the checkpoint, when the security team jokes with you and you pass the clearance test. You’re thinking about it all the way to the locker room, how wonderful it might be to one day get a taste of it, of the cosmos.

Gwen, as usual, brings you back to reality.

“Ooh, we’ve got engineering today.” She flips through the clipboard with eyebrows raised.

“Really? The whole day?” You try and peek over her exceptionally tall frame to look at the paperwork yourself.

“Looks like it yeah. We haven’t been in there for a while, have we?” She frowns.

“Let’s hope it’s not a shitshow, and they’ve not assigned it to us because no one else wants to clean it.” You groan, stowing your things away in the lockers you have side by side.

“You don’t think the engineers will be covered in blood, do you?” Gwen asks, looking genuinely worried by the thought.

“Nah, I think the worst we’ll get is emptying out the ashtrays.” You reassure her, and she cracks a grin as she lights up a cigarette of her own.

It’s no secret that the engineering labs are the most notorious places for custodial to be assigned, nor is it a secret that no one ever wants to go in there. The people are so highly secretive and protective of the work they do that half the time they bitch and moan that cleaners have to come in at all. But with all their complaining, you’d think that they’d try and do the custodial team a favor by keeping their stations organized and clear.

You’d think.

The first room you and Gwen tackle is the vehicle assembly room, and it’s nearly chaotic in the way that there’s things absolutely everywhere. Things you aren’t by any means allowed to touch. Big pieces of steel and iron waiting to be transformed into you don’t know what. It looks almost like a hangar, some large warehouse where employees are putting together new types of fighter jets.

In fact, for it being an assembly hangar, it looked like the place was swarming with engineers who were currently disassembling a plane. They were quick, efficient, too many men with clipboards watching too many men with saws and screwdrivers rip and hack apart a piece of…

You didn’t actually know, what it was.

“What the hell?” Gwen murmurs to herself as the two of you clean the glass in one of the observation offices on the ground floor of the hangar.

“I’ve never seen anything like that before, that shape.” You agree, spritzing cleaning solution onto the window that overlooks the big warehouse, engineers buzzing like bees.

They’re climbing all over it, this big hulking mass of metal. It has to be a plane, but it’s not one you’ve ever seen before. The body of the ship is a large orb, nearly perfectly circular and made of black metal with dark red accents. There’s a circular window which must serve as the windshield, but the glass has been shattered. Protruding from the sides of the orb are supports which are connected to what appear to be wings.

Except the wings on this plane don’t face sideways like any aircraft you’ve seen before, no, these wings face forward. In fact, they are so long that the extend far beyond the orb itself, and you wonder how that could be aerodynamic.

The plane, or whatever it is, looks like it suffered a massive crash – two of the wings are broken, and the glass of the shield is shattered, the orb dented in some places. Despite its poor condition, you find you can’t help yourself from admiring it, wondering which country could have designed something so unique.

But there are more pressing matters at hand, more rooms to clean, so the two of you shrug at one another and you move on.

Another one of these rooms happens to be an engines testing facility, up on the third floor of the hangar. It’s a much smaller space compared to the assembly room, with a lesser surface area to accumulate dust, and yet it seems as though it’s consistently one of the dustiest rooms. You and Gwen take your time going over every counter, every table-top.

No one pays you any mind, thankfully, as you go about your business. Gwen doesn’t seem to be in a very chatty mood today, which you don’t consider to be too out of the ordinary. She is over on the other side of the room, and the lack of her present company allows you a chance to absorb as much as you can of what’s on these tables in front of you.

This engine must have been taken from the plane, it must have been. It’s such a specific shape, circular like the body of the plane had been, that it only makes sense to have been from the fallen piece of machinery. It’s got a silver metal casing which has been broken and removed to expose all sorts of tubing, pipes and wires.

Under the guise of wiping down and sanitizing the sides of the whiteboards which the engineers write on, you read the scrawl that’s been left there, take in how each part has been labeled. You wish you had a camera, wish you had photographic memory, because what you read is fascinating, absolutely fucking fascinating.

It’s a reactor, a plasma propulsion engine – an _Ion engine_. You had only ever heard rumors of such a means of energy, had actually only ever overheard the rumors. Engines like these were supposed to reach up to speeds of almost ninety-thousand meters _per second_ – completely dwarfing any comprehension of how fast a ship could fly.

Didn’t they say commercial planes only went a little over three-hundred meters per second?

You nearly drop your cleaning rag, nearly drop the bottle of solution at the comparison. If these figures were correct, then that would mean someone out there had begun the work to travel at the speed of light – maybe even faster.

The thought makes you nearly overwhelmed, and you worry for a moment you were going to have another one of those strange spells, but none such thing came.

Thankfully, Gwen returns to your side soon enough, and you continue to move through the building as the shift goes on. You clean the bathrooms and the kitchen areas, the floors are mopped and the windows and mirrors all polished. You empty trash bin after trash bin – and dozens of ashtrays, some nearly overflowing with a mix of cigarette brands.

You’re grateful that there’s no other monumentally lifechanging material to be confronted with in this moment, and your hands itch to get home so that you can write it all down. They’ll be interested, so interested in this news – because you’re nearly positive it’s not them who made it, they’d be much more panicked if they knew the government had a hold of one of their ships.

Which begs the question, if it’s not the Russians, then whose is it? If the ship was built with an Ion engine, what else could it have possibly held – what weapons was it fitted with?

Before you know it, you and Gwen are returning to the locker rooms.

Gwen opens her locker and takes exactly ten seconds before she curses and slams the slender door shut.

“Oh, fuck me!” She groans, sitting down on the bench between the aisles of the lockers, peering into her brown paper bag lunch.

“What, what’s wrong?” You’re alarmed, sitting down and trying to see if she’s alright, already wondering how you can help.

“My sandwich accidentally got crushed, juice spilled all over and now everything’s sticky.” She bemoans, pulling out a tuna sandwich that’s now more a mangled mess of bread than anything else.

“Want to split mine? You can have the clementine.” You’re sympathetic to her cause, as the both of your stomachs rumble.

She sighs, gets up and throws the lunch in the garbage bin in the hallway, shuffling her feet in disappointment before huffing and puffing and sitting back down next to you, pillowing her head on your shoulder.

“No thanks, I don’t know how you’re not more concerned with your enamel.” She says, and you quirk an eyebrow at her.

“My what?” You laugh a little at her melodrama.

“You know, your teeth. Acid from things like citrus wears it down, my dentist told me that.” She says, as she lights up a cigarette.

Something about that feels counter-intuitive, but you keep that thought to yourself.

“I’ve been eating a clementine a day every year that I’ve worked here, and my enamel is just fine, so you can tell your dentist that he shouldn’t be scaring nice pretty women.” You pull out the small citrus from your own lunch bag, and offer it to her sincerely.

Though she gives a smile of gratitude, she shakes her head and pushes it back into your own lap. She blows smoke out the cracked window of the locker room, tucked away in your safe little corner. Some people elected to eat lunch outside, there was a small patio area with tables and chairs for the very purpose, since it wasn’t allowed to leave the property and then return if you were still on shift.

Gwen sometimes joked that if she got a taste of the sun for lunch, she’d be hungry for it more and more, so it was better to hide away in the locker room, enjoying the peace and quiet. 

“How has it already been five hours?” She wonders out loud, checking her watch.

You check yours too, and sigh.

“Don’t you think it’s wild that it’s only ten o’clock in the morning?” You muse, your mind wandering back to the day before where you pretended to be a normal person for once. “Some people are just waking up now, others are finishing breakfast-- the milk-man is doing his rounds right now.”

“Oh, shit.” Gwen groans again, and you can’t help but smile.

“What?” You ask, although you already know.

“I forgot to put my bottles on the front step.” Gwen smacks a hand to her forehead, predictable in the way she somehow manages to do this every week.

“Armitage does it for me, the angel. Although don’t ever let him know I called him that.” You wink, and she raises her eyebrow in a manner that has you already bracing for some sort of inane question.

“Do you think the two of you would ever, you know…?” She asks, waggling that brow and making your nose crinkle up.

“No chance in hell.” You say, before your tone softens. That immediate reaction maybe wasn’t the nicest, which wasn’t very fair to him, so you amend, “I love him, but he’s…well. He’s like you.”

“Like me, how?” Gwen frowns, and you look around for a moment to make sure no one was there to overhear.

“Plays for the other team.” You say simply when the coast is proven clear.

“But he was married to a woman!” Gwen’s volume doubles and you wince, “For ten years!”

“Not very happily, clearly.” You shrug, and she stares at you, before staring down at the floor, and then back at you, and then out the window.

“Huh.” Is all she can articulate – before breaking out into a fit of laughter.

“What’s so funny?” You challenge, ready to defend your neighbor, when she shakes her head.

“You’ve got two friends and both of them are gay, what are you a magnet for homosexuals? No wonder you’re still single.” She teases, leaving you to smack at her strong thigh.

“Hey! It’ll happen, I just have to meet the right guy, I’m holding out for him.” You say, peeling apart your clementine and plucking the segments apart, throwing a piece of the poorly ripped rind at her playfully.

Her laughter dies down a bit after a while and she blows more smoke out the window, stubbing the end of the cigarette against the concrete wall.

She sits down and puts her head back on your shoulder, and sighs.

“Just…don’t hold out too long, okay?” She says quietly, her tone having shifted to something far too somber. “I don’t want you blinking your eyes and all of a sudden you’re nearing forty and single, living alone in that apartment.”

“There’s nothing wrong with being forty and single,” You counter, because really, there wasn’t. You knew that in your line of work, finding someone to settle down with would be nearly impossible, and you’ve resigned yourself to that. Still, matchmaking was such a big deal to those in your age group, that the pressure was almost inescapable, so to appease her, you shrug. “But I don’t know, I have a good feeling about it, about meeting Mr. Right.”

“Was it that dream of yours again?” Gwen asks, still soft spoken, her confident personality pared back a tad.

“Mhm, I got closer the last time it happened.” You whisper, heart beginning to beat a little faster at the admittance of, “I saw someone.”

“Really?” Gwen sits up properly, eagerly faces you. “Who was it – someone we know? You know I was reading this thing about how brains aren’t smart enough to come up with a completely new person when you’re dreaming, so it recycles the image of someone you’ve glimpsed before even if you don’t know them personally.”

“He didn’t have a face, it was just the outline of a person.” Your mild disappointment and frustration at the lack of information in your brain makes you quirk your mouth down into a frown, and Gwen nods in understanding.

“Well, when your dream is a little more forthcoming, I better be the first to know.” She says sincerely, and that makes you smile, makes you remember how grateful you are that you have such supportive friends – even for silly things like dreams.

You try offering Gwen the clementine once more, and she smiles and reluctantly accepts a single segment, before fishing out a couple coins from her purse and heading to the vending machine.

She comes back with two sodas, one for each of you, and you cheers the little glass bottles together, back in good spirits once again.

* * *

As you’re leaving the locker room, ready to embark on your next set of rooms in the engineering building, your boss shows up out of nowhere and stands before you. Mr. Robert is in a much better mood now that he had been the last time you saw him. He was calm and collected, not dripping with sweat and looking like he was about to pass out from worry.

“(Y/N), Gwen, Mr. Tarkin would like to speak with you.” He says, before continuing on down the hallway.

You and Gwen exchange looks, and leave your carts tucked against the wall in a corner so that they’re out of the way, before heading down to the administrative offices.

The offices are probably the closest the base will ever come to being a normal workplace. The entire the third floor of the main building was a large room desks of secretaries and cubicles of pencil-pushers, surrounded by four walls of offices.

It’s almost jarring, hearing the ring of telephones and the clack of typewriters, the bustle of men gossiping by the water cooler, chatter of women recounting their holiday. It was easy to forget that some people had nine-to-fives, even in your own base. Not everyone worked the early morning shift, after-all.

Mr. Tarkin’s office is right next to Mr. Robert’s, so it’s easy enough to find. You’re very impressed with how much hes’ made himself at home, having only been there for two days. Already personal affects decorate the space, desk covered in little practicalities, cabinets with folders and stacks of paperwork securely tucked against the walls.

Behind his desk is a multitude of security screens, all focusing on different areas of the base. You wonder if those had always been there, or if it was something Mr. Tarkin had specifically requested. 

“Hello again ladies.” Speak of the devil, the man himself walks in after you, his attention seemingly needed elsewhere when he had sent the request for you to visit.

“Good morning Mr. Tarkin, how may we help you?” Gwen asks, as he rounds the table and sits down.

He doesn’t offer for you to sit, so you don’t.

“I’ve been informed that it was the two of you who found my fingers.” Mr. Tarkin lifts his hand, which is heavily bandaged with hospital dressings. You’re grateful that it would appear to be completely covered with gauze, not an inch exposed.

“I did, yes.” You confirm, “They were under a cabinet, sir.”

Mr. Tarkin’s expression is unreadable, entirely stoic, composed.

“I cannot thank you enough.” He says, although there’s no hint of gratitude in his tone, “The hospital was able to reattach them, let’s hope it sticks.”

“Yes, sir.” You agree, flexing your own fingers behind your back. You couldn’t imagine having them hacked off and reattached, the whole thing felt very Frankenstein.

“Are you familiar with that particular lab, misses…?” Mr. Tarkin trails off, prompting you to introduce yourselves.

“(Y/L/N) and Psalm.” Gwen says, making Mr. Tarkin’s lip twitch. 

“Psalm?” He repeats, curious.

“Yes sir, it is an unconventional last name, I am aware.” She is ready for a challenge, but one never comes.

“We can’t help our names.” Mr. Tarkin cuts right to the chase, “Are you familiar with science labs, Miss Psalm?”

You and Gwen look at one another, and she looks back at him, meets his steely gaze with one of her own. Gwen had a bad habit of being openly antagonistic towards people – men particularly – who spoke down to her, or assumed her intelligence was lesser because she happened to be a beautiful woman. Too many men though you could either have big tits or a big brain, and Gwen didn’t give a shit how powerful or how high in the command chain someone was, she’d cut them down to size.

“Yes sir, we have the appropriate clearance levels, so we often are assigned to detail and sanitize the many intricate facilities at the base.” She says, voice clipped. 

“I know you have the clearance, I ran a check on the both of you myself.” Mr. Tarkin surprises you both once again by not immediately attempting to explain the type of work that goes on in the labs in a condescending manner. Instead he leans forward in his chair at his desk and regards you both carefully. “When you were cleaning and consequently finding my fingers, did you happen to get a good look at it? The Asset?”

“No sir.” You lie.

It’s not really a lie, not really. You hadn’t gotten as good of a look as you had wanted.

“How long have you and Miss Psalm known one another?” Mr. Tarkin returns his attention to you.

“About ten years now, if memory serves.” You look to your friend, and she nods in confirmation, so you’re more confident when you say, “As long as I’ve been working here.”

“Ten years, that’s mighty impressive.” Mr. Tarkin’s lip twitches again. “I’ve been reading your files. What, if you don’t mind my asking, possesses a pair of beautiful young women like yourselves, to spend the prime of their youth cleaning up other people’s messes?”

And there it was again, that notion of wasting one’s youth away. You grit your teeth but attempt to be polite, attempt to not lunge over the counter and strangle this man. You imagine the way his neck would feel snapped between your hands, wonder what he might look like with that cold mask contorted into one of pain.

“It wasn’t supposed to be like this, but you get settled and find an environment that gives you what you need, fulfills you in some way, and you stick with it.” Gwen shrugs.

“How does being a custodian fulfill you, Miss (Y/L/N)?” Mr. Tarkin asks you, clearly trying to get a rise out of you.

“I like knowing that without people like me, this place would be a nightmare.” You say truthfully, a sharp gaze of your own cutting into his self-importance while your tone is kept light, unassuming. “Without people like me, people like you might not have had their fingers found.”

Mr. Tarkin regards you for a long while. You are not one to back down, and he seems to be realizing this.

“The Asset, whatever you think it is, it’s not.” Mr. Tarkin says as he stands up, puts his hands on his hips, careful of the bandages.

“We don’t think – ” Gwen starts, but apparently he wasn’t finished.

“When you’re assigned to clean, you clean, and then you get out. Is that clear? The thing we keep in there is an abomination, an aggressive and dangerous creature. I should know.” Mr. Tarkin raises his hand, but you don’t appreciate the way he talks about him, about the man in the tank.

“Is he not human, sir?” You ask.

That seems to be the wrong question.

“You clean, you get out.” He repeats himself once more.

“Yes sir, we understand.” You whisper, casting your eyes down in a faux submission to placate him.

He looks like he wants to say something else, but the red phone on the desk rings, and his attention snaps to that instead.

“You’re dismissed.” He waves you both away, “Close the door on your way out.”

You do as your told, giving him an overly polite curtsy, partially to be dramatic and sarcastic, before closing the door.

You and Gwen hold your tongues until you make it to the elevators, and you wait for an empty one to come by before getting in, allowing other people ahead of you to pass the time. 

“I don’t like him.” You say, once an empty elevator car appears, and the doors close in front of you, sealing you both away from the office as the feeling of dropping whooshes through your stomach.

“Yeah me fucking neither.” Gwen grumbles, before taking in a deep breath and going, “Hey, I was wondering if I could ask you a question?”

“You just did.” You point out, making her roll her eyes.

“Don’t be difficult.” She scoffs, and your tone softens.

“Go for it.” You encourage her sincerely.

She’s nervous, you can tell by the way she picks at her nicely manicured hands, inspects them thoroughly for imperfections that don’t exist.

“Remember how I was telling you that yesterday I ran into Mary, you know Mary?” She asks, and you smile, deciding not to bring up how yes, you were the one who told Gwen her name earlier that morning.

“I know Mary.” You nod, wondering what all this is about.

“She asked me if I would be interested in spending some time with her, possibly share the second half of the shifts with her from now on.” Gwen admits, looking guilty, guilty for breaking a tradition the two of you have kept for a decade.

“Is she…?” You ask, gesturing at your friend in a manner that insinuates being gay like Gwen.

“I think so.” Gwen nods, speaks carefully, quietly. “And I think I would like her very much, if I got to know her.”

“Then what are you doing hanging around me for?” You smile at her, bump your hip against hers as the elevator doors open on the ground floor, and the two of you return to your carts which thankfully haven’t been touched or moved this entire time. “Go, I can talk to Parker and have lists switched around, if it all works out.”

Gwen pulls you into a tight hug, one that makes you worry for her in the same way that you worry about Armitage.

“I’m not abandoning you, I want you to know that up front. I fully intend to spend the first half of the shifts with you, but maybe after lunch we can go off. Maybe you can meet your Mr. Right that way, without me hanging around.” Gwen tries to justify her desires to herself, but you won’t have any of it.

You support her, wholeheartedly, even if it makes you a little sad. Her friendship means more to you than that, than holding her captive.

“Sounds like a plan Gwen, go get to know Mary.” You hug her back tightly, arms squeezed around this beautiful woman who deserves nothing but the best chances at a life that will make her happy. 

“Thank you, (Y/N).” She whispers, before taking a big breath and pushing her cart away in the opposite direction of where you would both normally walk together.

* * *

Walking down the long hallway deep in the bowels of the base, you find yourself in front of the lab once more. It’s strange, not having Gwen by your side, strange not having her to comment and complain in that familiar way. But it’s also not together unwelcome. You wonder if maybe, since you’re coming alone, the Asset will be more inclined to show himself.

Just as you’re about to scan your identification card however, the steel doors hiss open and out stumbles a screaming scientist. You aren’t sure which one this is, but he doesn’t make it more than a few steps, before the top half of his torso slides off of the bottom half, a clean slice through his body.

You cover your mouth and nose in shock at the sight, stifling your own gasp, as the man falls to the ground in two pieces. It is quite the scene, and you tuck yourself out of sight behind the large mechanical mechanism which operates the doors as those in the hallway begin to scream and run away.

More scientists rush around the fallen man, panicked and desperately calling for help.

You cannot stop looking at him though, because though he is severed into two, there is no blood. You smell the stench of burnt flesh and it makes you gag, and only then do you realize that whatever has murdered this man has done so in a way where the seams of his body are cauterized shut, sealed on impact.

People flood the hallway, and you make the quick decision in all the commotion, to slip through the steel doors just as they’re beginning to close.

You don’t know what compels you to do so, but you do, bracing yourself against the shut door when it hisses closed behind you.

Unlike the other day, there are no pools of blood sloshing about on the floor. The room looks a disaster, chairs and tables toppled over, papers strewn absolutely all over every surface. You quickly bend down and pick one up, read through it hastily.

Bacta, you read, that’s what this jell-o shit is. It’s not entirely dissimilar to jell-o at all, from the looks of the paperwork.

“Stage four bacta composition,” You speak it aloud so that it better sticks in your brain, “Testing for the aid in regenerative properties of biological tissue.”

They were healing him? Regenerating biological tissue…did that mean they were torturing him to see how fast this shit could fix him back again?

You put the paper down right where you found it, careful not to disturb anything else for the time being, as you approach the tank.

He’s floating there, unconscious. The bacta around him is still, and as a result it’s much more clear than it had been the other day. You figure the more he moves, the more it agitates the gel and makes it more difficult to see. But he is still, once again hooked up to a breathing mask and that collar, as he floats peacefully.

He must be sedated, that’s the only explanation. He had to be the one who had killed the scientist, and he must have been shut down for it. But you place your hands on the glass anyway, leaning in close.

This close, you can see some features of his face, and you decide yes, he must be handsome.

His hair is black and beautiful as it suspends around his face. Of his face you can only see his eyes, see how they are closed against the gel, lashes long and dark as they brush against his cheek. He has a couple beauty marks dotting the exposed skin, one above his eyebrow and one on his cheek. You trace the spots with your finger, dragging it against the tank, entranced.

His body is another marvel altogether, you decide, as your gaze travels downwards. He wears nothing but what looks like a pair of swim trunks, a small sense of modesty. He is exceptionally well built, muscular and strong. His arms and thighs look like he could crush your skull between them, and you smile to yourself at the thought that he probably would, if given the chance.

He’s…he’s just so _wide._ His stomach does not sport defined abs, but there is clear power in the muscle there, the absolute thickness of him. His shoulders look sturdy enough to carry a carload of people without breaking a sweat.

But the thing that somehow, for some reason breaks your heart, is he is absolutely littered in scars and bruises. Even his face, there is a healed gash peeking out from the mask which you think connects to the one that splits down his neck and onto his shoulder. His stomach looks like bullet-holes which have healed, scattered about and mingling with criss-crossing patterns of weapons designed for torture.

You wonder if he came with those, or if they’d be souvenirs he leaves with. You’re not so sure which is more sad.

You wonder if he will ever leave, if they’ll ever let him.

Your eyes fix themselves on a new wound, one that must have just been inflicted, and watch in awe as the bacta does what it’s designed to do.

You’ve never seen anything like this before, never in all your years at the base. You nearly press yourself to the tank, smudge the glass with your breath as you level your face with his torso. There is a deep wound, one that had carved its way down into the Asset’s bone, and you nearly can’t believe your eyes as you watch it heal.

The bacta penetrates the wound and stitches it closed, almost like magic. It works from the inside out, works to rebuild and grow the tissues in the layers of their importance, until in only a matter of minutes, it is completely smooth, the only sign of any sort of injury being freshly pink skin.

And then, almost as if he knows, as if he can sense you, he raises his hand and presses it against the glass.

You dart to stand up once more, having been crouching in front of his stomach to watch the mesmerizing process of the bacta healing. His eyes are still closed, and he doesn’t move aside from his hand, and you wonder if it hurts, if it’s painful to regrow tissue that quickly.

Outside the door you hear talking, footsteps. And though they don’t stop in front of the lab, it’s a reminder that you’re not technically supposed to be here now, you’re not technically assigned to clean in this moment.

“I have to go.” You tell him, even though he can’t hear you – both because he’s asleep, and because he’s behind bulletproof glass. “I have to go but I’ll come back, okay? Tomorrow I’ll come back.”

You collect yourself and leave his side, leave the tank. You try your best not to step on anything, not to disturb any of the toppled furniture, not to make a sound. It aches you to leave him, but you know that he doesn’t even know you’re there to begin with.

You scan the identification card and wait for the blast doors to open, and without a look back, you leave.

You don’t see it, but his hand tenses against the glass, a silent plea for you to stay.

* * *

Once back at home, you make a beeline for the bathroom. There’s so much to process from the day, so much from the engine rooms, from the paperwork and the white boards and and and. There’s so much change all at once, and you’re still a little sad at the change in your routine, a routine which you held so dearly, now that Gwen has met someone new.

You drop your bags in the living room, put your shoes in their cubby on your way to the small bathroom where you plug the drain and turn on the leaky faucet.

You stare at yourself in the mirror, really stare at your face. You looked like you could use some care, and that was exactly what you intended to provide for yourself, care where no one else could. Armitage could have that handsome brunette, and Gwen could have the kind Mary, and you could have yourself, there was nothing wrong with that.

With the tub filled, you shut off all the lights, encased in darkness. Carefully, you shed your clothes, letting them pool on the floor at your feet, before taking a few steps into the tub and situating yourself in the nearly too-hot water. You close your eyes even though you don’t need to, you don’t, not with the lights off, every sunbeam sealed away.

It’s a beautiful familiarity, floating there in the dark.

It feels like you’re supposed to be there, like this is the world you belong in. Not the desert, not America, not planet Earth. In your mind’s eye, you can see the stars twinkling at you, a galaxy laid before you ready for the taking.

It pulls you, draws you in, and before you can even decide upon touching yourself, your hands slide down your body, smoothing over every curve and contour in the water. You can’t stop a smile from teasing the corners of your mouth as your body responds so quickly to your intentions.

You hadn’t had a chance to do this in a while, and the stress of the day melts away under your fingers as your legs part easily. You fit perfectly in this tub, perfectly enough that you can bend your leg in a manner that has your hips open without having to stick your foot out of the water. The shock of the air conditioning would be too jarring, you think, as you let yourself get wrapped up in it all.

You feel weightless in the bathtub, absolutely weightless, and you wonder if this is how the cosmonauts must feel, bouncing around in a vacuum of time and space.

You moan softly, as your fingers work inside of your body, sliding in and out of your pussy with care. You’re unhurried, in no rush to get yourself off. You want to savor this, savor the velvety feeling of your own pleasure. Your other hand trails back up your stomach, and you cup a breast in your palm, giving it a squeeze that has you moaning a little louder, your fingers teasing at your nipple and clit at the same time.

Your breath comes a little faster as you stroke your walls, finding a rhythm that has your hips lifting into your hand, has your thighs trembling. Everything feels a million miles away, everything aside from the curling heat that builds in the pit of your stomach, that blooms through you.

You bite at your lip, your cheeks, groans and moans and pants and gasps filling the vast expanse of inky blackness all around you.

You grin, because though you are not asleep, the familiar glow of red light behind your eyelids beckons you, and your pussy throbs for it. You can’t suppress a moan, so pleased, that the dream is returning to you, that familiar welcoming light that you want so badly to walk towards.

It’s just out of reach, and you cling to it, cling to the vision of it.

In your mind, ribbons of red silk wind around your hands once more, but this time, they don’t pull you forward over a threshold into the unknown. No, instead they focus their attention on your body, tugging your hands back down to pleasure yourself, seemingly having stopped to revel in the joy of the dream returning to you once more.

You are eager to get yourself off, an orgasm would make this the most perfect way to unwind. You pinch and roll gently at your clit and your chest presses out of the water as you moan, nipples stiff and desperate for some friction.

Before you can tweak your own nipple, that invisible force caresses your flesh, sends shudders down your spine as your fingers rub and circle your pussy. You lick your lips and give yourself over to the feeling of the hand on your body. It is so confident in the way it touches you that you know it can’t be real, can’t be more than your own imagination.

When you do come, it’s such a slow build that it washes over you, peaceful and calm. It, much like the darkness in your mind, the darkness which once more begs for you to join, envelops you completely, from the top of your head all the way down to your toes which curl against the porcelain.

Your body relaxes completely in the water, water which has now began to run cool. You’re sweating, whether from the steam of the room or the orgasm you gave yourself, you’re not sure. You don’t care, you’ve got no one to impress in that moment, no one to look good for.

You ride out the bliss for as long as you can, before the reality of the world comes creeping in and your exhaustion from the day settles into your bones. You have to get out of the tub before you fall asleep there, you know. So, carefully, you open your eyes to the dark of the bathroom and unplug the drain, turn on the shower to wash and rinse off.

Once you’ve crawled into your bed and have the sleep-mask securely over your eyes to block out the setting sun, you fall almost immediately asleep.

The dream is different this time. Very much the same, but different.

You are walking through the stars once again, they twinkle at you, greeting you happily, as if they are just as glad to see you as you are them. You approach the edge of the universe without a hint of fear, but this time, this time there is no man on the other side. No figure, no ribbons of smoke to reach out for, no figure to greet.

Instead, there are the jumbled sounds of what you recognize as your voice, echoing words that you spoke that day.

_I’ll come back…….. I’ll come back………… I’ll come back………._

Seemingly on a loop, the words come from all sides, above and below. They wrap themselves around you, but they are distorted, distorted from a lack of understanding, confusion. You don’t know how to explain it, how the feeling of your words is confused, but it’s almost as if the darkness doesn’t know what that means.

You think of him, of the man whom you gave these words.

You wonder if he had heard them, or if he had been dreaming too. You wonder what he dreams about, wonder what plagues his own mind. You wonder what his name is, what he sounds like, what jokes he likes to tell.

“I’ll come back,” You agree into the dark, promising the world around you, and everything it holds.

And you can feel the world thrumming, can feel it singing in your bones, echoing your words back to you with so much joy that you almost miss a face, half hidden behind a breathing mask, floating some million miles away.

Almost.

You smile at him, at the face which your brain has assigned the figure beyond the red veil, and though his mouth is hidden by the mask, you can tell.

You can tell he’s smiling back.


	3. Shackles of More Than One Kind

When you wake, it is dark once again.

For a moment, you blink and stare at the ceiling, the phantom image of his face swimming in the inky black of night. Holding on to that face, you tentatively reach a hand out into the air, hoping to touch him, hoping to feel something.

In the end, it is nothing but empty air, and your hand drops.

“The only station for when you’re on the go, tune in to AM W-6-Z-O!” The swingin’ dancers on the radio blare once again, an official signal that the time for dreaming is over.

With this new encounter, this new…you don’t even know what it is, you can’t help but feel your pulse quicken. Everything is the same – you will get up to brew your coffee, Armitage will pound against the wall, you will share your breakfast and take three buses to work – but simultaneously, nothing will ever be the same again. Because possibly for the first time in many years, you do not dread the thought of going to work.

Not that you dreaded it, work, not really. It was a good job, an important job, a job that was part of something bigger, much bigger than yourself. But you could not deny the excitement that simmers just below your skin at the thought of it.

The thought of seeing _him_ again.

“You’re chipper this morning.” Armitage scowls as he opens the door for you, a bright cheerful smile on your face.

“Haven’t the foggiest idea what you mean.” You breeze right past him, placing the percolator down on his pot-holder that he keeps on the counter just for this very occasion. Immediately going to his cupboards, you begin to remove the flour and sugar, giving him a knowing glance and asking even though you know the answer, “Pancakes?”

“Please, god knows I’m going to need something sweet today.” He groans, moves to sit at the table.

Sometimes, you can’t help but think how domestic this is. How your friendship had blossomed into a bond so much stronger than you had ever expected. You wonder if Armitage thinks it too, if he ever is reminded of a lifetime ago, when he was married to a beautiful woman and had a house in the suburbs, if when you pour his coffee and flip pancakes on the stove, his heart aches for that long gone time.

If he does, he says nothing about it, so you don’t bring it up.

“What have they done now?” You ask instead, knowing that this is a topic of conversation in which Armitage will always have something to say, always have something to complain about.

“It’s just these essays. Half the class it would seem, completely missed the point of the extra credit film.” He sighs, gesturing to a stack of papers once again sitting on the kitchen table.

“Oh that’s alright, at least Boris is happy.” Sliding pancakes off of the pan and onto a plate, you douse them in a generous helping of syrup and powdered sugar for the both of you, before moving to sit opposite him at the table.

Just then, the lights flicker on and off, making you both frown. The power had never had much of an issue before, what with the movie theater just downstairs needing those extra generators. You glance out the window, it wasn’t raining, and it wasn’t windy – both telltale signs of potential power failure.

“Do you ever worry about what will happen when he has to shut down the building?” Armitage grumbles, carefully and very specifically cutting his stack of pancakes into wedge pieces.

“No, because he won’t.” You shut that train of thought down at once within him, knowing that while he likes to pretend otherwise, your Professor has a proclivity for the dramatics unlike anyone else you’ve ever met. “He has renters for a reason after all, and the summer tourists bring in enough to make ends meet.”

Armitage thinks about that for a moment or two, before accepting the answer.

“You’re right.” He concedes, sounding resigned.

“I’m always right.” You wink, and the two of you finish your breakfast in companionable silence.

­­­

* * *

When you leave Armitage’s apartment and go back to your own, you cannot deny the rush that is the thought of seeing him again. It seems so silly, and of course it is silly, but something in you wants to look nice for him.

You fix your hair and pick out your cleanest most nicely ironed uniform, concerned for the first time about how it fits you, how it forms to your body. It is a modest uniform – you are a cleaning woman after all – but you find that despite the drab color palette and utilitarian shape, you look good. The clock chimes, and you realize that there isn’t much time to fuss, so instead of standing in front of the mirror, you pick a pair of heels off your grand shoe display, and hope that he finds the bright blue color appealing.

Dawdling had never been a trait of yours before, and now you understand why.

The bus is sitting and waiting at the stop when you exit your apartment building, and you run in those bright blue heels as fast as your legs can take you to make it just in time. The click-clack of your steps on the pavement alert everyone nearby, as you bolt towards the bus. Water on the ground from the night’s dew reflects the colors of the neon signs all around you, and when your foot splashes in one of the light puddles, a rainbow scatters around your ankles.

You make a beeline straight for the doors, which are open and welcoming you like a warm embrace, and only once the momentum of your body has thrown you into your seat, do you let out a long exhale.

“Thank you, I’m so sorry!” You could bury your face into your hands with how embarrassed you are, but your hands are shaking from the adrenaline of nearly missing the bus.

Missing this bus would have been bad, very very bad. It would have meant that you’d be late to work, and you have never once, not in the entire ten years on the job, have you been late for work. Such an irregularity would have raised suspicion, would have called attention to you – more attention than there already was. They wouldn’t like that, it would compromise your larger job, your more important mission -- you could not afford to be late. So, you sigh with relief and will your heart to stop pounding in your chest; all was well, you are on the bus, it did not pull away from the stop without you on it, you will be there on time.

“Good morning Miss (Y/N), no need to apologize, you know I’ll always wait for you.” Mr. Henry’s kind eyes glance at you with amusement through the rearview mirror, and you once again thank your lucky stars to have a friend like him.

Much like Armitage, you had never expected to befriend the bus driver. You had of course planned on being friendly and polite, but the extent to which you enjoyed the elderly man’s company had surprised you. And what’s more, you were constantly surprised by his willingness to be friendly with you in return. It reminded you that perhaps, there was a solidarity at the bottom – when there is no one to look out for the people like you and him, you look out for one another.

Could Mr. Henry have gotten in trouble by waiting for you? Would he be late to his other stops now? These were questions that you couldn’t help but think, but you have to wonder if they were questions he considered. Surely it would have been easier to simply leave you behind, but he hadn’t done such a thing, and you cannot express how grateful you are for that.

You resolve to thank him somehow, some way more meaningful than simply the words. It strikes you then, that despite speaking to one another every day, you still know very little about the man. You know he has a beautiful wife and a blossoming garden, you know he picks up a cup of coffee from the donut shop before starting his route, and you know which music stations he prefers to listen to. But beyond that, you have both remained relatively private.

He was not so different from you in that regard, you suppose.

Most people are not so different from one another, you suppose.

“For absolutely no reason at all, what is your favorite type of baked good, Mr. Henry?” You ask after a few moments, when the bus has left the stop and has continued its route, the Las Vegas strip a myriad of lights and colors, blinking and twirling in the night.

“Oh you don’t have to go doing all that – ”

“But I want to.” You insist, “Please let me?”

He looks up at you once again through the rearview window, and you see the sparkle of a smile in his eye. You wonder when the last time someone did something kind for him was, someone doing it just out of the want to see him happy.

“I may or may not be fond of those caramel brownies you make.” Sheepishly, almost as if he will be scolded for revealing such information, he confesses this to you.

You recall a time when you had to bring something to the company party, a holiday get together many years ago. You had been charged with bringing a dessert, and as a thank you to Mr. Henry’s continual kindness and hard work, you offered him one.

It makes you strangely emotional, to know that he had enjoyed it enough to remember it, after all these years.

“How very interesting to know.” You smile, and he smiles back, before he turns his attention to the next bus stop, and your window for conversation comes to a close.

She is waiting for you at the bus exchange today, standing and huddled in the large group of other passengers. It is chilly out in the desert tonight, and she has a beautiful black and white checkerboard coat wrapped around her body. In moments like these, watching the steam and fog of the bus exchange plume around her feet, Gwendoline reminds you of a movie star.

Perhaps in another life, her face would light up the screen, her silvery blonde hair and striking cheekbones commanding every man in the theater to fall head over heels in love with her. Sometimes she talks about it, about moving away from this city, about quitting her job.

Perhaps in another life, you might go with her.

Armitage would surely come too, wouldn’t he? He could get a job as a professor anywhere, he could pack up his apartment and join you and Gwen on a trip to Los Angeles, or New York City, or perhaps somewhere abroad – but you can’t, can you. You can’t leave.

And so, as selfish as it is, you hope that Gwen never leaves either, because you’re not so sure what you would do, were she to go.

This is especially true, as she catches sight of you politely making your way to where she is standing, and she smiles and throws a hand up to wave to you, as if you didn’t already see her. Gwen was, in so many ways, a beacon of color in the world of black and grey.

“(Y/N)!” She hollers happily to you, competing with the noise of the bus exchange.

The hiss and hydraulics of brakes and doors opening and closing, the sound of engines revving and radios humming, of the news playing on black and white screens behind a window of glass, of people talking and smoking and eating and laughing even though it’s too early for it all, still through this noise Gwen’s voice cuts through.

“Morning,” You smile back at her, offering a thermos as is your tradition every morning. “Coffee?”

“You’re a saint,” Gwen responds, accepting it as is her tradition. “Oh I love when you wear the blue shoes!”

She takes a step back for you to point your toe and extend your leg ever so slightly, the dazzling satin shining like sapphires in the artificial light of the fluorescent overheads. One of the men waiting in the crowd with you lets out a whistle when your skirt rides up just enough to show a little thigh, and you have to physically restrain Gwendoline from snapping her teeth at him.

“I really like this pair, I don’t know why I don’t wear them more often.” Chuckling just a little at your friend’s fierce protective nature, you draw her attention back to the shoes. It wouldn’t do to get into a fight just minutes before being in an enclosed crowded space together.

“Maybe because they’re the least practical thing for a janitor?” Gwendoline mutters, still shooting the man dirty looks. He has, thankfully, backed off – probably for his own safety. Rarely do men ever expect women to snap back, and oh how Gwendoline’s bite is worse than her bark.

“Maybe, but they are so beautiful.” You shrug, and this at the very least, Gwen can understand.

“Come, I think that’s our bus now.” She whispers to you so as to not draw the attention of the crowd around you, knowing how the rush of everyone wanting to get onto the bus and secure a seat can often lead to a mob.

Sure enough, as she pushes her way to the front and you follow her diligently, when the bus rounds the corner and the pushing and shoving begins, you two are already on your way to the back of the bus, coats and purses in your laps, a deck of cards ready to be shuffled.

In the back of the bus, you and Gwen hide your faces behind a hand of cards each, a game of Go Fish that you are sorely losing. You almost wish that the bus would hit a bump in the road, so that the cards could go scattering all over the floor and you wouldn’t be shamed with the loss, but then the thought of having to clean it all up makes you reconsider.

Gwen, for her part, doesn’t ease up on you one bit, a great big grin on her face as she claims yet another of your cards for her own little pile.

“I dreamt of him again.” You bring up, as nonchalantly as you can.

The bus has greatly reduced down its number of passengers, thankfully. No longer packed like sardines, you and Gwen have enough room to spread out, your belongings no longer piled up on your lap. Instead, they rest on the seat just across the little aisle, as you normally do. Still, it’s not entirely empty, there are quite a few stops to go before the bus pulls over into the dark of the desert and identification is requested.

All this means, is that while you can speak, it has to still be in hushed tones, lest someone from outside the building’s personnel overhear. Gwen hears you perfectly well despite your near whisper, and her face practically alights in the same way those flood lights search the sky.

“Please tell me there’s a face this time!” She abandons the cards to grasp at your hands.

For someone who prides herself on practicality, Gwendoline was incredibly invested in these dreams that you have. Every time you bring it up, she is genuinely and completely interested in hearing more, and you’re more than happy to indulge her.

“There is, and you won’t believe it, but it was, well, it was the Asset.” The last word is whispered so quietly that you might as well just be mouthing the words.

Upon hearing this, her eyes widen, mouth falling open ever so slightly.

“You’ve seen him?” Her shocked whisper makes you cast a glance around.

Good, you think, no one is paying any attention to you, everyone who is left has seated themselves at the front of the bus, knowing that they will be getting off soon and not wanting to have to shuffle through the narrow aisle.

“I – ”

“(Y/N) you didn’t sneak into the lab after all that, did you?” Gwendoline suddenly turns frustrated, exasperated with you. She hisses through clenched teeth, “After that creep Tarkin warned us specifically not to do that very thing?”

“I couldn’t help it Gwen, you can’t tell me that you’re not so curious to know what’s going on in there!” You explain, and she only scoffs and rolls her eyes.

“Of _course_ I’m curious! But I also have some sense of self-preservation.” She looks down at where her hands are clutching yours, turns your palms over in hers. You look down, see how calloused and rough the both of your hands are from a decade of harsh chemicals and hard work. “What if that man is dangerous? What if he hurts you?”

“He can’t, he’s behind bulletproof glass, I don’t think he can even hurt himself with how secure they’ve got him.” You try reassuring her, and it seems that at least for the moment, she is convinced.

Chewing on her lip for a moment or two, eventually she relents to your assurances, and a great big smile spreads over her face once more. You have half a mind to ask her what lipstick she’s wearing, and there you go again, daydreaming about looking nice for this man…

“What does he look like?” Gwen snaps you out of your reverie, and you duck your head, bashful.

You’ve been thinking about him and the way he looks ever since you laid your eyes on him, on his incredibly impressive frame.

“He’s huge. Built like a refrigerator, tall and wide. His face was hard to see, he wears a mask that covers nearly half of it, but his hair is long and dark, and his eyes…” You can see it so clearly, there in your mind’s eye; can see his flexing biceps, the abs, the thick trail of hair that disappears behind those swim trunks they have him in.

With a knowing smile and a shake of her head, Gwendoline sighs.

“You’re going to see him again, aren’t you.” It’s not so much a question, as it is a resignation. She knew you well enough to know that once you’ve decided something, once you’ve put your mind to something, there was very little that could stop you.

If only she knew how deep that sentiment ran.

“I have to, I promised him that I would.” You say, that giddy excitement returning to you once more.

You know that the lab is going to be on your list, you and Gwen are the only ones with high enough clearance for it, you know that at some point in the day, you’ll be face to face with him once again. And that thought thrills you, it has your leg bouncing, your pulse quickening.

Gwen can feel it in your palms, and she lets go of your hands so that you can fiddle with something to keep those busy fingers satisfied. 

“Just…just be safe, okay?” She whispers, “You know I’ll cover for you, but I need you to promise _me_ that you’ll be safe.”

Much like Armitage, and even like Boris, or Mr. Henry, you find yourself once again wondering how you got so lucky to have friends so willing to look out for you. You would do the same for any of them in a heartbeat, of course, but something about the knowledge that Gwen would lie to Mrs. Parker, or even Robert – something that could risk her job – made your heart clench.

“I promise.” You whisper.

She looks at you hard, trying to see what thoughts are going on inside your head, before letting the conversation go entirely, picking up her cards once again, determined to beat you at a few more hands before pulling up to the shuttle stop.

* * *

The morning passes uneventfully, as the mornings typically do. Today though, there’s an undeniable pep in your step, a glow about you that the other janitors notice. It’s not that they hadn’t noticed you before, they had of course – but with Gwendoline around, usually she absorbed all the attention. It was flustering to be on the receiving end of it, listening as the boys in the halls got a little too chummy with you, thinking your smiles were for them. Things like:

_“Lookin’ good (Y/N)!”_

_“Where are you off to with a smile that big?”_

_“Fancy a smoke with me and the boys?”_

Are whistled and shot your way, much to your amusement -- funny what a little confidence and a pair of heels could do!

You politely reject everyone’s advances, diligent about getting your work done and doing it well. The sooner you finish everything on your clipboard, the sooner you can get to the lab. It’s on your list, as you knew it would be, but it’s so far down and comes after so many other tasks, that you feel as though Mrs. Parker knew you were eager to return to the tank and the man inside of it.

Thoughts of the man consume you, as you go about your list. Nothing was too strenuous today which you were grateful for, it wouldn’t do to be too exhausted to spend time with him. So, as you empty all the little trashcans and ashtrays, as you clean windows and glass panes in offices, as you take the great dust broom to the floors, you let yourself wonder about him.

What were they doing to him today? Were they going to hurt him again? Would he kill someone again?

The last time you saw him, he was wounded, and that bacta shit had healed him. Would they be wounding him further, or did they have what they needed? You wondered if the scientists in the lab would be so careless as to leave their notes out again. The boys back home would be more than interested in reading further developments, you were sure.

Reminded of the boys, you feel more determined than ever to figure out what’s going on with this man, why he’s there in the first place. Surely he must be Russian, why else would the government be so keen on keeping him as contained as he is? Although, you don’t recall ever seeing a plane like the one that was being dissected in that warehouse, so maybe he wasn’t.

 _Maybe he wasn’t human at all_ …the thought pops into your head, and you blink it away.

The stories of alien life in Area 51 were just that – stories. No matter how often you liked to joke about them with Gwen, that’s all that it was, just jokes. Still, that ion engine, the strange shape of the wings, the strange gel that seems to have otherworldly healing properties…it raised so many questions that you simply didn’t have any answers to.

As you sweep the floors, back and forth and back and forth with your big dust broom, you wonder if perhaps you’ll be able to speak to the man. Perhaps he could give you some answers, perhaps you could help him.

You have no idea how you could, but maybe if the two of you worked together, you could figure out a way. One thing was for certain, you felt something for this mystery man. A sense of protection, a bond of some sort. It didn’t have a name, didn’t have much to define it at all – but it was there. Much like the dream, that reoccurring dream, it was indefinite and blurred around the edges, but it was there all the same.

For a brief moment, you wonder what the man dreams about.

You wonder if he dreams at all, in the tank. 

Time passes strangely, in the building. You’re certain that you’ve just gotten there, had just hopped off the shuttle with Gwen – but in the blink of an eye, it’s lunch time. Gwendoline very shyly lets you know that she’s going to be having lunch with Mary, and true to your word the other day, you’re nothing but encouraging.

Besides, it means that you could spend your lunch in the lab, it was the next place on your list anyway, no one could be angry with you for being there, no one could accuse you of being out of place. In the locker room though, you find yourself frozen, standing in front of the little metal locker that you call yours. There’s a compact in your purse, and you pull it out, look at yourself, really _look_ at yourself.

You feel so foolish for all this, especially when you open Gwen’s locker and find one of her tubes of lipstick. She always keeps a couple in her locker for emergencies, something you found silly, but now are eternally grateful for. Picking out a shade that best compliments your skin tone, you apply it carefully. The damn thing is likely going to smudge anyway while you eat your lunch, but at the very least you’ll look put together when you first arrive at the lab.

He better be appreciative of all this, you think to yourself with a nervous chuckle, he better care about all the effort you’re going through. Gwen would tell you that men never care, but she’s not here right now, off playing footsie in the courtyard with Mary.

As you walk the halls down in the bowels of the building, you realize how utterly alone you are in here. Everyone is on lunch, all the scientists, the janitors, the management. Not a single soul is in these halls, the greenish bluish light no competition for the sunshine that waits them near the picnic tables outside. You don’t mind, not one bit, and in fact it thrills you, the thought that you might be with him all alone.

Swiping your keycard through the little number pad, the doors beep and slowly open. Three layers of bulletproof steel slide open, one set horizontally, one set vertically, and one set diagonally. This lab would likely be perfectly impenetrable, in case of an attack, but you recognize that as well designed as it is to keep things out, it is also designed to keep things in.

Things like the man, who finally, after what seems like a lifetime, you will get to see again.

The lab is, much like the rest of this wing of the building, empty.

Once again you are faced with the mechanical nature of it all, the dark grey metal walls and floor, the tables with all sorts of piles stacked high atop them. The lighting is dark, kept dim, even dimmer than the halls outside. You hold your breath as the doors shut behind you, as they lock time and time again, sealing the lab away from the rest of the world.

You park your janitorial cart against the wall, your brown paper bag lunch clutched in your hands, just for something to hold, something to keep your hands occupied so that they don’t shake.

"Hello?" You call out gently, hopefully.

The tank is on the far end of the lab, and you take care to approach it cautiously. There are a million bubbles filling the tank, the bacta gel having been disturbed, and recently. Those bubbles trap the air and make the gel look nearly white with all the foam. You have to get closer, have to approach the glass, straining to see inside it.

“It’s just me, I’ve come back to visit you.” You try again, this time speaking a little louder. Maybe he just couldn’t hear you, through the glass and the gel.

Bracing yourself for him to scare the shit out of you with a startling appearance, you nearly press your nose to the tank. But seconds go by, and there is no activity. A deep deep sense of disappointment and fear spike through your body – if he was not here, where was he? What had they done to him? Where had they taken him? Was he alright -- ?

The immediate string of questions is interrupted by a splashing sound coming from your left, and you whirl around, clutching the brown paper bag to your chest.

He is out of the tank, but he is still here, still in the room with you. For whatever reason, he has been moved from the tank to the pool, and you know this because as you watch with wide eyes, he rises up out of the water, standing up to his full height on his two legs, strong legs, powerful thighs that flex and carry his body towards you.

Remaining perfectly still, you do your best not to gasp. You had thought perhaps, the glass from the tank had distorted his proportions, maybe he wasn’t nearly as big as you had thought. But you’re wrong, he’s even _bigger_ somehow, in the flesh, in front of you. He must be over six feet tall, and twice as wide as the normal man, or at least, twice as wide as any man you had ever seen.

But the most unexpected thing of all, is that he is not wearing the mask.

You have a clear, unobstructed view of his face for the first time, and it takes your breath away. He is utterly, completely, totally handsome. Your imagination could have never come up with the configuration of his features, never in a million years. His nose, so strong and proud looks slightly broken from the front, but when he shakes the water away from his hair and you catch sight of his profile, it is beautifully sloped and triangular. His lips have to be the most full and plush that you’ve ever seen, his ears are large as they poke out from the dark drenched blackness of his hair.

You’re staring, you know you are, but he doesn’t seem deterred. In fact, he’s staring right back at you, looking at you with soulful brown eyes that seem to be sharper than anything you’ve ever seen, eyes that seem to be taking you in with the same level of intensity that you do him. 

“Oh!” You realize that he can hear you now, you realize that this is the chance you’ve been hoping for, so you reach out your hand for him to shake, and offer him a friendly, “Hello.”

The man’s eyes track the movement in a way that can only be described as predatory, as an apex creature focusing all their energy on their prey. Strangely though, you don’t feel like prey. Keeping your hand extended, you take slow even breaths, showing him that you mean no harm, showing him that you won’t hurt him.

You’re not like those men, those scientists, you won’t hurt him.

“My name is (Y/N). It’s a pleasure to meet you.” You introduce yourself, speaking as carefully and clearly as you can. “What’s your name? Can you understand me?”

The man simply looks at you, as if in a trance of some kind. You look around, check over your shoulder to make sure, absolutely sure, that no one is around.

Once you’re determined that the coast is clear, and this man continues to take in the sight of you, you move one step forward, closer to the edge of the pool.

“Can you understand me now?” These words come in another language, a switch of your tongue that would have you arrested on site if anyone had heard.

He frowns, confused, and you wonder if this is the first time anyone has tried being polite to him since his capture. You’re about to retract your hand, when suddenly, he lifts his own, his arm tensing as he reaches for you – only to be stopped by long chains that are attached to cuffs on each of his wrists, and to the metal collar he wears around his throat.

The man looks at his bindings, and strains against them with a strangled shout of frustration. His muscles bulge, but it’s to no avail, whatever he has been shackled in, is too strong for him to break through. You have to sit, your legs unable to support you for the moment as you take him all in. Settling on a step near the edge of the pool, you lean in enough for this man to do the same. He too sits, just on the other side of the edge, as close to you as the chains will allow.

Reaching your hand further, further, further still, the man freezes as you place a palm to his cheek. The skin of his scar is smooth, and you find that surprising, as you stroke his face. Eyes closing, the man lets out a shaky shuddering exhale, nuzzling into your palm. He reminds you of a bear trapped in spiked teeth out in the forest, or a lion in the cage of a circus.

“Why do they have you chained and collared like this, why are you here?” The Russian flows freely now, you no longer hold it back the way that you might have in front of anyone else.

Then, suddenly, the strangest noises come out of his mouth. You think that he might be in pain for a minute, but then you realize no, he is _speaking_ to you, impassioned and desperate, his voice is deep, rumbling, coming from the depths of his chest, a baritone that vibrates down inside your bones.

This is the voice that you heard in your dream, you realize. The voice parroting your words back to you, now you know why it had sounded so strange, so off. This man didn’t speak English, and he had only been mimicking the sounds, not knowing what it meant. You’re not sure what this man speaks, and it pains you, it pains you to not share this with him.

“I – I’m sorry I don’t understand.” You have to cut him off, putting your hand over his mouth to interrupt him, to get him to stop. You’re not sure if he even knows what you’re saying, if he can understand but not translate it out of his own mouth, you don’t know. “I’m familiar with ten different languages but yours isn’t one of them, I’m sorry.”

The man looks so sad, devastated, and that at least feels like maybe he can understand you. All at once, you recognize that if he can understand you, there may be hope. Perhaps if you both learn to communicate in a way that doesn’t rely on words, perhaps if you can find a way, you can help him.

That will require some planning, great planning, careful planning.

The man is watching you, he rests his head on the ledge of the pool, his black hair slinking and sliding down the strong muscles of his back. It is as if he is telling you to not be afraid of him, the very same way you were trying to tell him not to be afraid of you.

It strikes you, for a moment, how human he is. Even if by some cosmic improbability he is an alien, he is _human_. His stomach growls then, loudly, so loudly that it makes you laugh, and you shut yourself up immediately, afraid of scaring him with the noise. He doesn’t go anywhere though, his eyes only widen, making you smile.

The man mimics the motion, smiling back at you, a small laugh of his own.

 _He has dimples,_ you think, as you only grow more and more attached to him, _and his teeth are so crooked_.

“Here, I don’t know what kind of shit they feed you, but you must be hungry.” You rifle through the little brown paper bag that you’ve been holding in a death grip this entire time, pulling out the first thing you see. The clementine fills your palm, you offer it to him cautiously, encouraging, “Go ahead, you can have it, I promise it’s okay.”

The man, wherever he has come from, must not have seen one of these before, because he takes it in his hand and immediately goes to bite through the rind. Your hand flies out and grabs his before he can do so, and despite it all, you laugh again.

He scowls, thinking you’re making fun of him, so you simply shake your head and demonstrate how to peel the hard outer flesh of the fruit away.

“Don’t make fun of me for the way I peel it, I can never get it to come off in one go.” You mutter, wondering wondering wondering if he can understand you.

Watching diligently and carefully, he sits patiently at the edge of the pool, his palm extended, resting near your hands. Piece by piece you peel the clementine, always trying to get it in one spiral but failing, as usual. Eventually, once the floor has been littered with peel and the clementine is bare, you pry the citrus into segments, and place one in his hand.

It looks so small, comically small in the man’s palm, even smaller as he raises the piece to his mouth and pops it in between his teeth, the juice squirting into your face, making you laugh once again. The man’s face lights up immediately, already asking with those strangled sounding words that you cannot understand, a language foreign to even your ears.

“It’s good right?” You hope that that’s what he’s saying, you hope that he likes it. Giving him the whole thing, you watch as he delicately pulls the segments apart. “Bright and sweet. It’s just about the only thing bright in this whole place, hm?”

Instead of eating the entire thing as you would have expected him to do, the man thoughtfully gives you half of the segments. You notice that they are the larger pieces, the ones that must be more flavorful, juicier. He is kind, you decide, kind enough to offer you the better of the halves at the very least.

“Why are you here?” You whisper, knowing he cannot answer. “Why do they torture you so?”

There are no fresh wounds this time, you are glad to see. Nothing healing or inflicted, just the smoothed over scars. You long to touch them, the pink lines that mar his flesh, but he is a person of agency, and you will not disrespect him the way that these scientists do.

So instead, you offer your hand out to him once more, and after careful consideration, the man presses his cheek against your palm. Your thumb rubs soothing circles against the little beauty marks and freckles that pepper his skin, and you sigh.

“I’m going to figure out a way for us to communicate. I don’t know how, but I will.” You tell him, tell yourself, “You won’t be alone, I’ll help you, I just need to figure out how.”

Out in the hall beyond the sealed off lab, a bell chimes, signaling that lunch is over. Regret and disappointment rise up in your throat like acid, you don’t want to leave him, you don’t want to go away from him. He has been in your dreams, all this time, it has been him, of this you’re now sure. But you have a job, you have a responsibility, and you cannot lose it now.

Pulling away, he makes a noise of protest, and this is a noise you can understand.

“I have to clean. You can watch me, if you’d like, but I can’t just sit here all day, or else they’ll be very angry with me.” You explain to him, willing him to understand, “And if they’re angry, then I can’t visit again.”

The man sighs, chews on the segmented clementine.

With that, you move to the other side of the lab where you’ve parked your cart. The only thing on the list is to mop the floors, and you find that you hate that, you wish there were more, wish that you could have more time. You never thought you’d think this, but you hate how efficient you’ve become, how they’ve entrusted you with the jobs they know you are quick at. It is a double edged sword, because if you weren’t good at it, then maybe they wouldn’t have assigned this lab to you in the first place.

Dunking your mop in the solution that you make yourself – vinegar and baking soda, and a little dish soap – you begin to work, the thing you’re actually there for. It is very obvious that he’s watching you, from his spot in the pool. He walks back and forth, almost stalking you, his hulking frame tethered to you by an invisible string. When you go to the right, so does he. When you double back to the left, he goes as well. You smile, hoping that he finds the incredible mundanity of it all not so mundane.

“You’re very handsome. I’m only saying this because I know you’ve got no idea what it is that I’m saying, otherwise I’d be dying of embarrassment. But you’re handsome.” You admit when your back is turned to him, swishing the mop this way and that, picking up the little stains and debris that have stuck to the floor in the time since it was last mopped. “I was wondering what your face looked like, without the mask.”

You continue to mop, and he continues to watch you.

In a strange sense, it is almost like a dance. The sound of the water splashing as he moves back and forth, as he creates little waves and currents, acts as a rhythm, a steady beat to which you mop. His breathing is calm, and he seems to be in a relaxed mood. Maybe he has been hypnotized by the repetitive motions that you make, or maybe, a hopeful part of you thinks, maybe he feels completely at ease with you.

The thought sours in the back of your throat, because you know that once you have finished this, you will have to leave.

You prolong it, you try your best, you really do. But eventually there comes a point in which you cannot procrastinate any longer, you cannot draw it out. The floor is mopped, your clipboard is checked.

Carefully, walking over the freshly mopped tiles slowly and deliberately so that you don’t slip, you sit on the edge of the pool once again, something painful like sorrow making your head hurt.

“I’m done.” You whisper, “I have to go now.”

He’s alarmed by this, the man. He seizes forward, rushes to reach for you with wide panicked eyes, but the chains around his neck yank him back, and he stumbles for a moment, nearly loses his footing in the water. You could cry, with the desperation in the words that he speaks, with the way he reaches for you with bound hands.

You lean as far into the pool as you can, your arms wrapping around him, nearly toppling over into the water with how far forward you are. You don’t care, so what if you should fall? You cannot bear to see him so sad, and so you pull him into an embrace. He holds you tightly, hands curling in your hair, breathing in your smell.

“I know, I know I’m sorry – I don’t want to leave you. But I’ve got more work to do.” Your voice wobbles, hating this, hating how he’s chained, hating how he’s going to be all alone, how he’s going to be tortured and harmed in your absence. You hate it, and he doesn’t want to let you go, you can tell by how strong of a grip he has on you as he talks and talks and talks in a language you don’t know.

There is nothing you can do today though, to help him. For the first time in your life, you feel overwhelmingly insignificant, in the way that you can’t do anything to help him.

“I’ll come back tomorrow, even if it’s not on the list, okay? I’ll come back, I promise.” Your hands cup his cheeks, looking at one another, your eyes boring into his. “I’ll always come back.”

You let go of him now though, and you turn your back to him, mopping up your steps so that the footprints do not give you away.

Swiping your keycard through the number pad once more, the doors open for you, and you do your best not to cry when you hear his pained shout muffled behind the steel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been 84 years....or at least it feels like it! I'm so sorry for how long this update took, there's been so much going on in the world that I lost the motivation to work on this. But that motivation has come back with full force, and I am very eager to finish this story!! Thank you all for your patience and for sticking with me on this one, I appreciate it more than you can ever know :) 
> 
> As always, if you'd like to chat or yell or anything about this, you can find me over on tumblr @babbushka I'd love to see you there! <33


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